Sep. 09, 2009 - Issue #725: Sex in the City 2009
Die-Nasty
The cast of Die-Nasty once again trade their beds for the stage, all weekend long
This time around, the theme (a loose scenario to scaffold the weekend’s improv) is a high school reunion, a scenario that seems particularly fitting for Patti Stiles: the weekend marks not just a lengthy performance for her, but an Edmonton homecoming.
Now living and working in Australia (where she’s the Artistic Director of Impro Melbourne), Stiles was a founding member of the Die Nasty troupe and holds the record as the first female to perform the entire weekend without sleep. While the thought of performing from Friday to Sunday without sleeping might, provoke more gawks than copycat attempts, she still seems gung-ho about trading her 40 winks for the extra stagetime.
“It sounds insane that you would be awake that long,” she explains, “but it’s really not that hard. There are chunks of time that are incredibly difficult, but the majority of time is fun. And where you brain goes in the impro, and the intensity of the reality of the environment and the characters that have been created. Actors desperately search for, and train towards, living their characters in the moment, be it impro or script. And when you’re improvising for that amount of time, that’s what you’re doing, because it becomes the reality. You live that life for that many hours.”
The distance of her new home, plus teaching and performing opportunities in Europe and elsewhere have kept Stiles away from the Soap-A-Thon for the last few years, but “this year, it just worked perfectly, in that I was invited to both of these other festivals, [in] Calgary and Austin, which fall on either side of the Soap-A-Thon. I could not say no. And it made me happy dance around the room,” she laughs.
As for the high school reunion theme, Stiles thinks the idea contains more than enough possibility to fuel a weekend of improvisation.
“We’re all crazy in high school. We don’t know who we are, really. We’re trying to fit in with people who don’t know who they are, really. We’re all trying to figure out how to date, how to meet, who we’re going to be, who we are, where we’re going. There’s so much interpersonal dynamics to happen in that time,” she points out. “And then to go back and see those people after you spent a chunk of life figuring it out. That to me is just really rich in story. To go back and see the guy that you were desperately in love with for three years ... is this someone that you would’ve wanted to be with, or, is it the moment missed? Is it the bullet dodged or the moment missed?”
Soap-A-Thon mainstay Mark Meer has his own hopes for what high school pastimes get revisited onstage.
“Personally I hope to see some Dungeons & Dragons being played, as that was the extent of my high school memories,” he jokes (maybe).
The reason for this year’s shorter than normal run, he says, is actually for the audience: Sunday night seems to run a little late for them. And besides, at this point, Meer points out that they don’t have anything to prove by clinging to those extra three hours. He himself is all but unphased by his now yearly weekend-long performances.
“I haven’t gotten the hallucinations in years,” he says. “I miss them.” V
Fri, Sep 11 (7pm) until Sun, Sep 13 (9pm)
Die-Nasty Soap-A-Thon
Featuring the cast of Die-Nasty
Varscona Theatre, (10329-83 Avenue),
$15 from 7pm – 1am, $12 all other times, or $40 for a weekend pass
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