flush ink productions

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NEWS & REVIEWS

Asphalt Jungle Shorts

Arlene Thomas plays Gina in

The Orange Whistle, one of

the plays in Asphalt Jungle Shorts.

Colin Hunter

Downtown's a stage for 17 quirky plays

KITCHENER (Sep 16, 2006)

As night falls on the city, 20 strangers gather outside an empty downtown parking garage. No one knows what to expect. A sign duct-taped to the wall reads Please Take the Elevator to the Fifth Floor. The strangers oblige.

The door opens, revealing a woman wearing a wide-brimmed hat seated behind a small table. She hands out lanyards and tells the strangers to wear them around their necks. A card dangling on each lanyard reads Asphalt Jungle Shorts. And it warns: Maybe Bring an Umbrella -- a caveat worryingly similar to the one given to people in the first few rows at Sea World. The strangers are ushered into a brightly lit, echoey expanse of the garage. A man hands everyone a folding chair from a blue van. In front of them, a young, lanky man tinkers under the hood of a car. He mutters to himself.

People whisper. When does the show start? Is this part of the show? A downtown church bell chimes eight times.

Then: "I collect river water," blurts the man who was handing out chairs.

It is the first of many odd statements made in many odd locations as part of a very odd theatre production. A young woman in a Catholic schoolgirl uniform climbs over a concrete wall and asks: "Would this be the nightmare camp?" Moments later, the guy tinkering with the busted car admits he often dreams that someone is trying to feed him poisoned sardines. And that all happens in just the first five minutes of the two-hour theatrical experience.

Asphalt Jungle Shorts is theatre without a theatre. It's a roving production of 17 quirky, site-specific plays in which the city itself is the stage. It is the brainchild of Paddy Gillard-Bentley, a Kitchener playwright who had, as she puts it, "a wacky plan to do something different."

None of the plays is longer than 20 minutes. One includes just one shouted word. The performances are strong and fittingly cracked, handled by mainstays in local theatre like Kathleen Sheehy, Heather Gurd and Gary Kirkham (in a particularly ludicrous role).

The first play, The Orange Whistle by Californian playwright Shirley King, is about a man stranded in a parking garage -- hence the setting. When it concludes (with a hilariously nightmarish twist), the audience is asked to follow the leader to the next location.

To reveal the locations would sabotage the impromptu appeal of the production -- but all are within a few blocks of the parking garage at Duke and Ontario streets where the show begins. The scenarios change as drastically as the scenery. A touching piece about a woman preparing to remarry is offset by the a sketch in which an attractive young couple strip down to their skivvies and over-analyze their way out of what could have been a fun romp. About that: You might not want to bring your kids to Asphalt Jungle Shorts. On occasion, it's as giddily lowbrow as it is low-budget.

Along with the 12 actors, downtown Kitchener itself becomes a kind of character, lending its own unique touches to an already surreal production. As audience members march from one "stage" to the next, stragglers tag along. Car horns honk, drunks holler and gawkers gawk. In one alley, the smell of garbage mingles with a hint of urine to evoke an almost-too-real sensory experience.

The scripted and unscripted elements compliment one another, creating a unique atmosphere that could never be duplicated inside a theatre.

As Shakespeare wrote, "all the world's a stage." Asphalt Jungle breathes new life into those words.

chunter@therecord.com

ASPHALT JUNGLE'S MOVING EXPERIENCE

MARTIN DEGROOT (Sep 5, 2006) Kitchener-Waterloo Record.

There are so many great things on the cultural calendar for the next few weeks that it's hard to know where to begin:

Opening night of the 2006-07 Theatre & Company season on Thursday and Friday.

Music in the Park with the K-W Symphony in Waterloo on Sunday afternoon.

The weekend of Sept. 23-24 looks especially rich, with the Cambridge Artist Studio Tour and Waterloo's Mary Allen Studio Tour happening over both days, plus the Royal Medieval Faire in Waterloo on Saturday and Kitchener's Word on the Street on Sunday.

Along with these returns, a brand new cultural event has been generating some buzz: the promotional material for Asphalt Jungle Shorts, a program of brief, site-specific plays performed in unexpected locations throughout the downtown, promises "theatre like Kitchener has never seen it."

The point of departure for each performance is the Duke Street Parking Garage (the one with the striking concrete helix between Queen and Ontario streets), from which audience members will be led, in "mystery tour" fashion, to a variety of locations within easy walking distance. Portable chairs will be provided.

The prime mover here is Kitchener playwright Paddy Gillard-Bentley, who has gathered around her a company of talented theatre artists from near and far known as Flush Ink Productions.

Asphalt Jungle Shorts includes some 17 plays by 11 playwrights, led by six directors, performed by 12 actors.

The list of directors includes many familiar names: Darlene Spencer, Heather Gurd, David Antscherl; Kathleen Sheehy will act as well as direct; Gary Kirkham is acting, directing and playwright for two of the offerings. Nicole Lee Quesnel is working as stage manager.

Part of the motivation is to animate the city centre: Gillard-Bentley loves the genuine urban feel of Kitchener's downtown, which is what the title Asphalt Jungle is meant to evoke in a lighthearted, wholly positive manner.

Although Gillard-Bentley has lived in this area all her life and cannot imagine working anywhere else, she has also been able to draw on an extensive network of professional contacts and get artists from as far away as California, Missouri and Ohio involved in the project.

All this is being done on a shoestring budget: A few business sponsors have come forward (most notably Jump Logistics of Cambridge), but most of the startup funds have come from the producer's own pocket. First and foremost, it is Gillard-Bentley's energy and hard work that allowed this project to happen, along with the dedication of the artists, who are all working on a profit-sharing arrangement.

It is also important to acknowledge the role of the City of Kitchener, which has provided critical resources such as help with insurance, printing and publicity.

Kitchener deserves praise for its ability first of all to recognize that a project like this is something worth investing in, and its willingness to follow through with a creative, flexible dedication of city resources to help make it happen.

The key here has been seasoned, knowledgeable city staff who are trusted with enough discretionary power to allow them to take some risks. It is a practice that has yielded the city and its citizens benefits of incalculable value over the years through cultural endeavours such as the Registry Theatre, Globe Studios, Open Ears, the Contemporary Art Forum, or the Tapestry celebrations of diversity.

This has been a subtle, slow development of something that become part of the way the city operates. It is something that might escape the notice of an observer like Glen Murray, the former mayor of Winnipeg, who has visited a few times, heard some reports, and reaches the conclusion an embarrassment such as the Forsythe demolition fiasco undermines the credibility of Kitchener's bid for a Cultural Capital of Canada designation for 2009. And he's probably right.

At the same time there's Asphalt Jungle Shorts, along with scores of other, often equally modest, but also equally creative, original, and therefore highly risky endeavours that the city has helped make happen. And that is evidence that can be cited to support the proposition that this community deserves, and that Canada would be well served by, a cultural capital designation that draws attention to the artistic achievements of the tri-city area, led by the City of Kitchener.

The showtimes for Asphalt Jungle Shorts: 8 p.m. Sept. 14 to 16, 21 to 23. For more go to http://www.skyedragon.com/asphalt.html. Tickets $15 / $5 eyeGO. Audience size is limited, so reservations are recommended: Call 519-744-9708 or email flush-ink@skyedragon.com. For reserved tickets, please be there at least 15 minutes before show time to pick up your tickets.

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