Nov. 04, 2009 - Issue #733: Broke
EVAsion: Body Odyssey
Firefly Theatre's introspective EVAsion follows not the life, but the post-death story of Eva Perón
"It had this little paragraph about the odyssey that her body went on after she died," Duggan explains. "The story is so convoluted and twisted ... the more I started to read about Eva Perón the more infatuated with her I became. She was astonishing, and the story of her body is even more astonishing than I had imagined from the start."
Duggan started digging into the macabre history of Perón's corpse only to find a tale that sounded like a sinister black comedy. "After she died she was embalmed immediately. The embalmer wanted to make her his creation—his work of art—so for three years her body was kept in this room in the department of labour. It was a black room and she was suspended on a glass slab floating in the middle of the air. So immediately I knew I had to do it in the air, which works for me," she chuckles. "I wasn't sure if it was going to work, if it would have a sense of humour, or if it was just too incongruous."
Duggan's initial creation was a 15-minute piece that premiered at the Expanse Movement Arts Festival in 2008. Now fleshed out with the directorial help of her Firefly partner (and real-life husband) John Ullyatt, EVAsion is an hour-long theatrical presentation that sees Duggan suspended in a white silk cloth, performing acrobatics while channelling different aspects of Perón's historic identity. The shroud will be bathed in video projections provided by lighting designer Jeff Osterlin.
"When she was embalmed they also made three body doubles of her corpse out of wax and vinyl, so I play the body doubles. Through those I'm able to show the polarization of how people feel about her, of the dichotomy surrounding her mythology," Duggan explains. "Body double #1 represents that Latin American 'she's a saint' perspective, and body double #2 represents the European-born oligarchy viewpoint of 'she's a whore.' Body double #3 is us, the people in North America that only know Evita the musical."
Though the Madonna movie of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical helped make Perón a household name in the late '90s, Duggan notes that the portrayal wasn't exactly fair. The West was somewhat biased against her husband, Juan Perón, because of his ties to Nazi Germany and fascist Europe, so the biographical information available on Evita in English, at the time, didn't reflect the real reverence that South American people had for her.
"The idea conceptually is kind of far out, to do this play about a dead woman in the middle of the air as a monologue," Duggan says, noting that this piece is quite a departure from Firefly's customary circus fare. "For one thing it's serious. So much of what we do is so light-hearted and frivolous and really entertainment driven, this is not at all—this is much more introspective." V
Sat, Nov 7, Sun, Nov 8 (8 pm)
EVAsion
Planet Ze, (10055 - 80 Ave). PWYC
an artist talk-back follows each presentation
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