Greenland

The script of Greenland is published, one of the three scripts in Fault Lines, which won the Governor General's award for Drama last year. Thus sophisticated comparisons between text and performance might be made. One of the other two, Iceland (obviously related), was well staged in April at Studio 16.

Greenland is presented on a tug moored beside the Public Market, an original BYOV. The audience, limited to 30, is divided into groups of ten, two of whom will hear monologues at the ends of the boat, outdoors, with the third group squeezed into the tiny cabin. Finally all 30 come together at the bow to hear a creation myth, which in the text is actually the end of the first monologue. Tigermilk Collective have rightly spotted that the monologues can be heard in any order.

Nicholas Billon's subject is global warming, approached obliquely.   One speech begins "Fuck the polar bears" and a second "Fact: Greenland's coat of arms looks like a kung fu fighting polar bear."   Secondly, we are left to puzzle out the relationship between the three people, their personal problems and how these might possibly connect to warming in Greenland.   Billon is an unusual and very skilled dramatist.   His material is so compelling that passing boats and other sounds did not distract me.

Lindsay Drummond and Kirsten Slenning play the women and that very good actor Billy Marchenski the man.   In the cabin, he was sitting across the table from me, three feet away, and I watched and listened more intensely involved than ever before.

I have never previously described a show as unforgettable: this one is.