Nov. 02, 2011 - Issue #837: Cleopatra’s Sister
Yellow Moon
Until Sat, Nov 12 (7:30 pm);Timms Centre for the Arts, $5 – $20
» Ed Ellis
"Every scene has new conventions and rules about how to tell the story. It's very 'theatrical,' if you will," she says. "All of it is glued together by the conceit of the performers who are telling this story and they use whatever means they need to tell it, including, of course, characterizations in scenes."
Even in the grounded plot, the regular conventions of life are done away with, its characters left without a safety net: the meeting of Leila, a withdrawn bookworm of Arab descent, and cocky, criminal Lee, leads to an instant of violence, from which they hightail out of the city, left alone with themselves, removed from the comforts and understandings of an urban sprawl.
The lack of conventionality certainly appealed to Selman, the former drama department chair at the University of Alberta now back in town after a year spent in Kenya, helping Aga Khan University develop an arts curriculum for Eastern Africa.
"That's one of the things," she says. "Certainly, in terms of [being] a director, in terms of why do I do live theatre, absolutely. It's very exciting, and a lot of room for decision-making. But the other things are the themes and the story. It's certainly coming of age, but what's interesting to me is how do these two dispossessed young people [go through], what do they have to go through to come out the other side newly confident, newly believing in themselves but also newly changed because of the events?"
Until Sat, Nov 12 (7:30 pm)
Directed by Jan Selman
Timms Centre for the Arts, $5 – $20 vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus
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