Oct. 12, 2011 - Issue #834: Protest in the riot

Prevue

BASHIR LAZHAR

BASHIR LAZHAR

The cultural mosaic, our national metaphor for unity and cultural perseverance, doesn't hold up to scrutiny very well. It defines the preservation of each piecemeal part and, in a quintessentially polite Canadian move, each segment is theoretically left unaltered by the others. But any actual unity it professes to offer is left unaccounted for; connect a bunch of cultures of varying sizes, let them coexist and let come what may. What that does is leave the minorities to fend for themselves, in a cultural sense, and Bashir Lazhar picks up on the realities of that.


The titular fellow (and only speaking figure in Evelyne de la Chenelière’s play) is an Algerian-born immigrant, perpetually wide-eyed and on the verge of excitable panic. He finds himself substitute teaching in Montréal, but struggles to comfort his sixth grade class in the wake of a tragedy, while dealing with his own damaged past and the present intolerances that our country doesn't ever really account for.


"It's not about the revolution or the political tension or conflict that happens," Michael Peng, who plays Bashir, explains. "It's about, now he's in Canada, trying to deal with systems that he doesn't understand. And there's a racism here that is very polite, very repressed, and it's hidden in different ways. So it's much more delicate and much more fragile and it's harder to pin down here in Canada, because we have official multicultural policy. But there's still very many differences, and do we really tolerate, or, toleration is one step, but do we really accept? That idea of acceptance, and actual involvement and participation in these cultures, that's very different."

All that to say Bashir Lazhar explores, with nuance and texture, the realities of being a newcomer to Canada. It doesn't preach, but simply presents this particular story through Peng's performance. After premiering here back in the 2009 Fringe, it's now on the tail end of a summer remount that toured Antwerp, Kiev, London and the Edinburgh Fringe. In the latter, the production earned itself some particularly high international praise: Peng received a Best Actor nomination in the Stage Edinburgh Awards For Acting Excellence, one of five nominated from the festival's 2300-plus performances.


That makes this weekend's Edmonton run a victory lap for Peng and Wishbone Theatre, but one he's thankful to gets to do at all: last year he suffered a cranial bleed (and had to pull out of Workshop West's production of An Almost Perfect Thing). He's doing better, he notes, but his brush with death has certainly increased his sensitivity to the world around him, and the purpose of his art.
"Entertainment is great. Making people laugh has a purpose, absolutely," Peng states. "But there's a political dimension, there's a real-life, asking-questions-and-pursuing-ideas level that I think it's important for artists to be engaged in. Because artists go there first, on behalf of the regular people, and then the other people come along. It's usually artists who are there first. That's our responsibility."
 

Until Sun, Oct 16 (8 pm)
Directed by Piet Defraeye
Avenue Theatre, $10 – $15 vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus