Michael
Rubenfeld never meant to start CanadaHub when he brought hit show Counting
Sheep to Edinburgh two years ago. As producer of the Lemon Bucket Orkestra’s
self-styled guerrilla folk opera about the build-up and aftermath of the Ukrainian
Orange Revolution of 2004, Rubenfeld couldn’t have predicted the effect Mark
and Marichka Marczyk’s messy mix of east European klezmer and interactive
re-enactments of key events connected to the revolution would have on what
happened next.
Influenced
by international Edinburgh Festival Fringe showcases such as Big in Belgium,
Rubenfeld pitched something similar to visiting Canadian dignitaries. Last year,
the first CanadaHub took up residence at the King’s Hall as part of Summerhall’s
programme with six shows by young Canadian companies. This included the Herald
Angel-winning Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story as well as Fringe hits, Mouthpiece
and Foreign Radical.
This
year, the second edition of CanadaHub returns to the King’s Hall with five works.
These include First Snow, or Premiere Nege, a collaboration between Quebec-based
companies Theatre PAP and Hotel-Motel with the National Theatre of Scotland.
The show also forms part of the Made in Scotland programme. The rest of
CanadaHub goes beyond conventional play-writing in a showcase highlighting a generation
of theatre-makers operating in radically different ways.
In Ming
Hon’s piece, Chase Scenes, three women act out a series of chase scenes culled
from films and presented using live video feeds, props and costumes in a DIY
film studio. In a similar vein, Famous Puppet Death Scenes finds The Old Trout
Puppet Workshop company doing exactly what the show’s title suggests.
The
other two shows are both solo works. In Daughter, performer Adam Lazarus
confronts toxic masculinity in ways which on previous runs has seen many
audience members walk out. Huff, meanwhile, sees playwright Cliff Cardinal play
two indigenous brothers caught up in a world of solvent abuse and loss. For
those in search of light relief, CanadaHub will also host CanadaClub, a late
night programme of Canadian cabaret and comedy.
“Canada
is sometimes seen as a country that’s trying to survive,” says Rubenfeld, ‘and
we’re not often seen as a country in a global context, so our response with
CanadaHub is to be able to create a space where we can have all these complex
conversations that are going on right now.”
Scotland’s
theatrical relationship with Canada and Quebec has long been a fertile one.
Thus far that relationship is probably best known for Scots translations of
plays by Michel Tremblay, with works such as The Guid Sisters and Solemn Mass
for a Full Moon in Summer produced by the Tron and Traverse theatres respectively.
Other
work by Quebecois writers seen in Scotland include Daniel Danis, whose play,
Stones and Ashes, was seen in a translation by Scots playwright Tom McGrath, while
Reel of the Hanged Man by Jean-Mance Delisle was produced by the Stellar Quines
company. The company also co-produced a production of audacious feminist play,
Age of Arousal, by the late Linda Griffiths.
Quebecois
maverick Robert Lepage has performed his epic works in Edinburgh and Glasgow at
various points over the years, while the Calgary-based One Yellow Rabbit
company has visited several times.
“People
know about our stars like Robert Lepage,” Rubenfeld observes, “but they don’t
know about the rest of Canadian theatre.”
CanadaHub
arrives in Edinburgh hot on the heels of controversy concerning Lepage’s
forthcoming show, Kanata, which aims to tell ‘the story of Canada through the
prism of relations between whites and indigenous people.’ An open letter signed
by prominent indigenous actors, writers, activists and artists and published in
Quebec newspaper Le Devoir, and written in response to an interview with Ariane
Mnouchkine from Theatre du Soleil in Paris, where Kanata will premiere, aid
that no North American actors will be appearing in the show. The letter decried
the ‘invisibility’ of indigenous people in Canada and Quebec, with its
signatories saying they were fed up ‘of hearing other people tell our stories.’
Rubenfeld
is conscious of such tensions, and has remained sensitive to them in CanadaHub,
particularly through Huff.
“There
is so much still to do in relation to indigenous people,” Rubenfeld says. “and it’s
a problem we’re probably still about a hundred years away from solving. I don’t
think most people know much about the intensity of the indigenous experience in
Canada, and a show like Huff gives people a taste of the quality of indigenous
work. It’s a hard piece to watch, but it’s one of the most successful indigenous
shows in many years.”
While
there is undoubtedly an element of political branding behind the various
international showcases that now exist on the Fringe, the packaging of the likes
of CanadaHub, Big in Belgium and Made in Scotland also provide something of a selective
crash course in a country’s theatre scene that puts it on a global stage.”
“What’s
great about Edinburgh and the Fringe is that the world comes here,’ says
Rubenfeld. “The world is both big and small right now, so how do we learn about
the people who live in it? The international showcases can make a huge difference
to that.”
For
CanadaHub in particular, in Rubenfeld’s view, it helps show off some of the
complexities of a country through its theatre.
“First
and foremost, he says, “I think that, through CanadaHub, audiences can get a
really nice taste of what’s going on in Canada. For me as well, what’s really
important is that we hold on to the nuances of things when we talk about being
alive. Right now I think we’re losing that. There are so many terrible things
going on in the world right now, and what’s nice in Canada is that we can still
have complex conversations about things, and hopefully the shows in CanadaHub reflect
that.”
Canada
Hub, Summerhall@ King’s Hall, Venue 26, August 1-26. Daughter, 12.30-1.40pm; Chase
Scenes, 2-25-3.25pm; Huff, 4.15-5.20pm; First Snow / Premiere Neige,
6.10-7.40pm; Famous Puppet Death Scenes, 8.30-9.40pm. CanadaClub,
10.30pm-12.30am.
The Herald, July 27th 2018
ends
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