BLINK: and you'll miss it

One of the coolest things about Leaky Heaven is their connection to East Vancouver, specifically to the Strathcona and Grandview neighbourhoods. This connection was in full evidence at the third edition of Blink at a packed Russian Hall on December 13th.

At times, Vancouver can feel like a rootless city: it’s a place people come to, not a place people come from. It is also an over-planned and over-managed environment where spontaneity and organic expression are not encouraged (but being in bed by 10:00 pm is). There are some glorious exceptions and Leaky Heaven is one of them. No matter how wacky the concept, their shows have a sense of being rooted in a specific artistic community, creating work at a specific time. If someone asked me to show them something that represented Vancouver as a unique, cultural centre, Leaky Heaven would be at the top of my list.

Blink – described as “performance for the modern attention span”, with no act longer than a minute – felt like a big neighbourhood party with the local performance community providing the pre-Christmas entertainment. It was fun, it left you with a warm glow and it was unmistakably East Van.

What with HIVE, Theatre Under the Gun, Brief Encounters and Blink, Vancouver seems to be evolving an aesthetic of (and a talent for creating) short and unusual performance experiments. I have no idea whether this is a unique Vancouver phenomenon but these events provide fascinating public laboratories for the creation of new work and a showcase for the performers who call this place home. What is perhaps most noticeable is how comfortable the majority of performers are in crossing disciplines. I don’t want to overstate this, but this “inter-dis” quality was much truer at Blink than in any number of full productions where you have a little dance and then a little text and then a little audio-visual distraction.

As Nicolette Little said in her piece on Brief Encounters, the joy of these showcases of mad experimentation is that they allow everyone – performers and audience members – to simply relax and enjoy. There is no pressure of matching up to audience expectations or critical appraisal. Two years of work has not gone into the creation of a particular work. In this sense, they’re next to impossible to review, so perhaps the best thing to do is give you a sense of what it was like being there.

Our host was Riel Hahn, who did a masterful (mistressful?) job of guiding us from the family part of the show through to the “adult” stuff that came later; even her jokes were calibrated accordingly. Towards the end she participated in a memorable kissing competition with members of the audience. The evening started with ten short pieces by the Leaky Heaven Youth Theatre Company. I couldn’t help but wonder as I watched these talented children at what exactly I was doing when I was their age. Maybe television now isn’t as good as it was in the 70s. The feel at this point in the evening was of a school talent show but without the pain and boredom. Imagine being dragged to your niece’s baton twirling showcase but only she had talent and was cool and had a nice line in sly humour. Nigel Wakita ended the family portion of the show with what was described as juggling but looked more like magic as he deftly manipulated a small orb. I’m a sucker for this kind of thing and was delighted to see it included in the mix with theatre and dance artists: it’s all performance.

I think, technically, the family portion ended with Adrienne Wong and Tanya Podlozniuk singing a delightful duet based on the binary code of 0 and 1. They played ukuleles and while it was still family-friendly it hinted at the bizarreness to come. Podlozniuk – who provided a sort of spine for the final portions of the evening – appeared again a short time later and we were fully into the land of creative weirdness as she provided a pair of disjointed legs to Delia Brett’s strange (and weirdly haunting) queen. Jeff Gladstone – who seems such a nice chap – did a series of tricks with his pet bearded dragon (which seemed only slightly anxious at being in front of a crowd). Having re-read the last sentence, I should be clear that a bearded dragon is a type of lizard and I’m not using a coy euphemism; things hadn’t got that adult yet. Nita Bowerman appeared vulnerable in a costume of tin foil and lights, while Craning Neck gave us a distressing looking Santa (Simon Driver), who opens a present but we don’t discover the contents because the performance is prorogued. Lesley Ewen also appeared in a strange yet weirdly fascinating outfit, disrobed slightly (but tastefully) and sang for us; unfortunately she suffered from a slight technical difficulty – her bubble blowing thing didn’t blow bubbles. David McIntosh just stood in front of the audience. Mathew Graham and Simon Driver are now forever burned into my retina as humping pieces of foam and Pound of Flesh Theatre did Fucking Hamlet – which was sort of like Shakespeare crossed with Mamet and delivered in under a minute. Stefano Giulanetti – standing outside (or was he?) – phoned in his list of top-ten favourite spam subject headings to Hahn. Jennifer McLeish-Lewis really wowed the audience with Fishgirl, while Tallulah Winkleman and Emila Symington Fedy stood back to back, wearing seemingly the same skirt and each playing the accordion. I think they were reindeer. Tom Jones appeared as a Santa only mildly less depraved than Driver’s (although it would seem that he was about to have sexual congress with his reindeer: I don’t think even Driver’s Santa was capable of such depravity). Sasa Brown paid energetic homage to Flashdance which was fantastic and the evening ended with a well-dressed Billy Marchenski providing a sexily-clad Podlozniuk with an extended golden shower that made perfect use of the timing of the “almost over, not quite yet” pee.

There was also music with the Bank Dogs (more of those precocious, tv-deprived children) and the super-charming Dan Mangan. There were others and I do apologize to anyone I’ve missed. I’ve posted a list of all the performers below (with thanks to show producer Adriana Bucz for providing this helpful aide memorie to my rapidly diminishing power to recollect – perhaps the impact of too much television in the 1970s).

The Russian Hall, if you don’t know, is perfectly placed at the edge of Stratchona and is within walking distance of the entire Leaky Heaven ‘hood. It was fun to be jammed in there with so many friends and neighbours. Even the weather provided a little performance of its own. After Marchenski had finished pissing on Podlozniuk, someone opened the fire-doors to let in some fresh air (somewhere around Fishgirl, it had started to get very hot in there – but that might have been me). Outside, the city was covered in snow. Personally, I found this quite exciting. In a city obsessed with views and weather, it was fantastic to spend a few hours in the dark celebrating what people are capable of. What a Christmas gift.

Here’s a full list of who contributed to the evening:

The Leaky Heaven Youth Theatre Company
Kristian Ayre and Carlos Fajer
Nigel Wakita
Kirsten Slenning and Lindsay Drummond of Tigermilk Collective
Adrienne Wong and Tanya Podlozniuk
Susan Bertoia
Delia Brett and Tanya Podlozniuk
Proximity Arts
Sticky Fingers Productions 
Marcus Youssef 
The Contingency Plan 
Caroline Liffman, with Billy Marchenski and Tanya Podlozniuk
Jeff Gladstone 
Nita Bowerman 
Craning Neck Theatre
Seven Tyrants Theatre 
Lesley Ewen 
David McIntosh 
Matthew Graham and Simon Driver 
Luisa Joijic
Pound of Flesh Theatre 
Stefano Giulianetti 
Jennifer McLeish-Lewis (Fishgirl)
Santa and his Reindeer (Tallulah Winkelman, Emelia Symington Fedy, and Tom Jones)
Sasa Brown
Billy Marchenski and Tanya Podlozniuk

Music by the Bank Dogs and Dan Mangan

Emceed by Riel Hahn