Bridge Mix: serotonin when you need it

If, like me, you’ve been feeling overwhelmed with work and unable to do anything well because you’ve taken on too many things, then I suggest you head downtown to the salubrious surrounds of the Metro Parking Garage and take in Bridge Mix. It’s theatre with a serotonin kick and I guarantee you’ll come out feeling a whole lot better. Even if you’ve been feeling rather chipper, give it a go – we can always use a bit of body-induced sunshine.

A co-presentation of ITSAZOO Productions and Enlightenment Theatre, Bridge Mix features a series of short theatre pieces by nine different companies. Unlike the more Darwinian HIVE experience where audience members have to work to get into the shows they want to see, Bridge Mix is more genteel and audience members are kindly chaperoned to the different levels of the parkade where the performances, each about ten minutes, take place. There’s even a beer and wine cart that follows along.

Writing about these sorts of multi-headed events can be tricky. You want to create a sense of the overall experience but at the same time you want to acknowledge the individual works. The problem is in trying to do the latter, you end up with a menu review where each show is given a short summary that can sound unintentionally dismissive. I don’t really know how to avoid this and so will likely fall into the same trap here but thought it was worth also highlighting a few major things that struck me over the course of the evening.

Using the parkade for playing spaces meant that there was a constant and interesting exploration of the tension between the internal space of the parking lot and the external sleekness of the downtown towers. Almost without exception, the shows made effective use of the parkade setting. As you’d expect in a bleak environment (parking lots are not places designed for prolonged human interaction after all, and through thousands of movies we think of them as places of gangsters, rapists and drug deals), many of the shows explore issues of alienation, particularly relationship discord, and even violence.With a couple of notable exceptions, most of the shows were laced with humour and there were many laugh out loud moments. And music, there were references to musical theatre throughout the night.

It is also interesting how the parkade environment – with its deep, low horizons – lent a cinematic feel to so many of the shows. This was particularly noticeable in the ITSAZOO piece, where two businessmen hang out at their car, one of the Slam Ink sequences where a performer chases a Pilates ball and especially with Upintheair Theatre who use the streetscape below expertly.

The evening starts off with Hey Good Lookin’ (ITSAZOO Productions) with two business types in suits (PLANK regular Sebastien Archibald and Colby Wilson) talking all David Mamet until Archibald pops a balloon that has appeared near their car. The balloon’s destruction heralds the arrival of a clown and a prolonged debate between clown and businessman ensues. It turns into a kind of a zombie-clown piece and the rising horror is nicely handled and, to be honest, any show that features the line “you fucking clown” delivered to a real clown is going to get a thumbs up from me.

This was followed by Done by Dinner (Genus Theatre) which features a floor hockey game with members of the teams drawn from the audience. The game keeps getting interrupted by an angry driver. Although nothing revolutionary narratively, the show effectively puts the audience into the action, not just the game but also the confrontation with the driver, and it is quite joyful to watch adults playing as children.  

Coincidence Partnerships (Slam Ink) was a series of linked vignettes that took place throughout the evening about a guy on a date. Although well performed by all concerned and with some good lines, the concept was slightly one note. I do admire Duncan Paterson's courage in writing a piece for himself as a womanizer with a string of attractive birds after him.

Both Are Me (TigerMilk Collective) is an exploration of memory and, appropriately, is slightly elusive in the process. A performer, Lindsey Drummond, moves around a nicely defined space while we hear a voiceover narrator describe memories that she’s experienced and seems to have trouble making connections between. There are some wonderfully staged elements in the piece, including the use of an old record player and photographs. The most theatrical and complicated piece of the evening, it is great to see TigerMilk exploring this material.

Borborygmi (Upintheair Theatre), one of the highlights of Bridge Mix for me, makes great use of the environment that surrounds the parkade. It’s kind of tricky to talk about this piece because our perspective shifts part way through and then the show evolves in an unexpected manner. The elements are handled very well and the blending of performer and streetscape is simply captivating.

The Ballad of Jeff (The Peter n’ Chris Show) is basically a comedy sketch.  The performers are very gifted and there are some great lines and snappy ideas in this piece, which is about a journalist trying to get a human interest story out of a transient who claims to be a genius. There is a slightly awkward tension here, I suppose, with the fact that were they not well policed, private spaces Parkades would be used for shelter for the homeless. It is made even more unsettling when you go down the ramp to the next piece.

What greets you at the end of the ramp is Eastside Ghosts (Spectral Theatre). After sketch comedy we’re plunged into message theatre. There’s nothing really wrong with this, per se and I have nothing but admiration for the performers and the level of commitment they brought, but I’m afraid the script by Michael Cope and Simon C Hussey is a heavy-handed blurring of wish-fulfilment and audience confrontation. While it’s laudable that they try to redeem the lost women of the downtown eastside by telling their stories, they made the fatal error of making the killer the centre of the piece and, in my opinion, assuming that someone like Willie Pickton has any remorse over what they did.

We then went back up a ramp for my highlight of the evening Noggin (SNAFU Dance Theatre) which features Ingrid Hansen as a 12 year old who has invented a helmet which can extract the dreams from volunteers. Hansen does great clown work as she pulls members of the audience into the playing space with her. For the final sequence, Frankie is drawn into a dream and suddenly gains grace and starts dancing, moving around the space in surprising and beautiful ways. It may sound a bit on the nose the way I’ve described it, but Hansen is great and it’s rare to see a performer who can go from clown to dance so effortlessly. I loved it.

The last show of the evening, A Situation (Enlightenment Theatre) takes place on the roof and strangely bookends with the ITSAZOO piece, featuring as it does conflict between strangers (this time a hipster and a business-type). The violence escalates into Highlander territory and while it was fun, I wish they’d used the breathtaking environment around them a little more creatively.

So there you have it, the Bridge Mix Menu as experienced by me. Bridge Mix was a tonic for my soul. It finishes this weekend, check it out while you can and here’s to future instalments.

Bridge Mix runs until May 15. For more information drive here.