{"id":70335,"date":"2021-02-06T17:03:14","date_gmt":"2021-02-06T22:03:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/?p=70335"},"modified":"2021-02-06T17:03:14","modified_gmt":"2021-02-06T22:03:14","slug":"scrutiny-tarragon-theatres-premiere-orestes-is-part-of-a-brave-new-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/2021\/02\/06\/scrutiny-tarragon-theatres-premiere-orestes-is-part-of-a-brave-new-world\/","title":{"rendered":"SCRUTINY | Tarragon Theatre\u2019s Premiere \u2018Orestes\u2019 Is Part Of A Brave New World"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tarragon
Anthony Perpuse in Tarragon Theatre\u2019s \u2018Orestes\u2019 (Image courtesy of Tarragon Theatre)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tarragon Theatre\/Orestes<\/a>, written by Rick Roberts, directed by Richard Rose, live interactive online production, Feb. 3 to Feb. 14.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

We have coined a new theatrical phrase in this time of plague \u2014 \u201clive online\u201d. This means the viewer is seeing a play unfold in real-time. It is not a pre-recorded film. With their venues tightly shuttered, theatres have had to move into the digital age, so a live online production is as close as you are going to get to a real theatrical experience.<\/p>\n

Tarragon Theatre\u2019s premiere of Rick Roberts\u2019 Orestes<\/em> is part of that brave new world.<\/p>\n

Along with the usual suspects like set, costume, lighting and sound designer, we have now added to the creative team, video and stream designer, video operator, web interface designer, and lighting interface designer. These artists have helped to fashion Tarragon\u2019s virtual theatre. All this came about when the company had to cancel the production of Orestes <\/em>which was due to open the 2020\/2021 season. It was play director\/Tarragon artistic director Richard Rose who came up with the idea to overhaul Orestes<\/em> for online streaming. Roberts\u2019 reworking of Euripides\u2019 ancient Greek tragedy had already moved the plot into the digital world, with Orestes being an influencer with millions of followers. The baseline of the material was there for the transformation.<\/p>\n

What the Tarragon had to do was develop what Rose calls the \u201ctech build\u201d. The result is a major rewrite with each of the ten actors performing in their own space or mini studio. Throughout the play, they are either online with each other, or engaging in cell phone conversations. It is interesting that Roberts, in a YouTube video, said that he can\u2019t imagine Oreste<\/em>s ever being a stage play again because as a virtual play, he could expand and explore the subject to such a greater degree.<\/p>\n

\"Krystin
Krystin Pellerin (Image courtesy of Tarragon Theatre)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The basic plot does loosely follow the Greek original. Orestes (Cliff Cardinal) has killed his mother Clytemnestra for causing the death of his father Agamemnon, and although acquitted of the crime by not being criminally responsible, he has been de-platformed, or banished from all social media. Can an influencer, \u201cthe poet laureate of the internet\u201d, survive offline? His sister Electra (Krystin Pellerin) doesn\u2019t think so, and Orestes is already showing signs of madness. She wants to flaunt the law and bring him back online. She also wants their uncle Menelaus (Richard Clarkin) to lift the banishment, and points out that Menelaus is also a murderer by starting the Trojan War in order to rescue his kidnapped wife Helen of Troy (Lisa Ryder). Their grandfather Tyndareus (David Fox), Clytemnestra\u2019s father, wants Orestes to be punished and puts pressure on Menelaus to do so. An Orestes supporter is his cousin Hermione (Eleanor Guy), a talented singer and the daughter of Menelaus and Helen, whose new album and music video are both in the cause of Orestes.<\/p>\n

Electra has created #orestesarmy<\/a> to get Orestes\u2019 followers onside, and in Roberts\u2019 modern-day plot, the Greek chorus contains fervent fans of Orestes \u2014 the fortune-telling CASMR@NDRA (Bren Eastcott), the merch guru RuDaGold (Anthony Perpuse), the backward-looking artist MandLbrot (Gabriella Sundar Singh), and Pylades (Jeff Ho), the latter being Orestes\u2019 closest friend from the original play. How all these characters interact together is the burden of Roberts\u2019 play.<\/p>\n

By being virtual theatre, Roberts was able to add in interactive elements. At two points in the play, audience members get to choose a chorus member to follow, before returning to the main story, which fleshes out their character. At another time, they get to choose to follow one of the women. At the end of the play, we all got a surprise phone call from Helen.<\/p>\n

\"Richard
Richard Clarkin and a cast of thousands. (Image courtesy of Tarragon Theatre)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As well, there is a chat room with running commentary by the viewers. At one point, CASMR@NDRA, RuDaGold and MandLbrot join the chat room. They mostly interact with each other, but do some back and forth when viewers chime in. Now all this technology does lead to some glitches. For example, I got closed out of the site whenever I made a choice to follow, and had to re-enter with the password. According to the chat room, others had various troubles as well, but we didn\u2019t miss anything and were able to follow our characters once back on the site. As a side note, I did put a message on the chat room that I found having to sign in annoying, and someone called Diva tartly told me to \u201cDeal with it. Recognize complexities.\u201d<\/p>\n

Judging from the post-play chat room comments, everyone was impressed with the video design, or as viewer Sam called it, \u201cthe unique inventive technique\u201d that, according to Rose, involved green screens, multiple cameras and arms-length sound and lighting design (courtesy Kimberly Purtell and Thomas Ryder Payne, respectively). In fact, we were told to wear headsets to really benefit from Payne\u2019s evocative sound design. Of course, kudos to Frank Donato, video and stream designer\/video operator, and Ian Garrett\/toasterlab, for the web interface. Imaginative touches include how each person\u2019s image moves about the screen, sometimes interposed on each other, for example, Electra appearing on a wall of her brother\u2019s room, or, the use of backgrounds \u2013 like Menelaus giving his speech in a Greek amphitheatre. As Electra recounts her brother\u2019s online success, we are shown a series of glamorous photos of Orestes.<\/p>\n

When people are talking about Agamemnon\u2019s death, we see flashbacks. Throughout the play, isolated words appear on the screen like a subconscious word association puzzle which adds a psychological element. Shannon Lea Doyle is responsible for the sets and costumes, which are cleverly character-specific. Sometimes people are in headshots, other times in rooms. For example, we first see Helen in a staircase foyer of a home garbed in sunglasses, kerchief and trench coat, and later in a headshot, she wears elaborate jewellery and the criss-cross top of an ancient Greek costume.<\/p>\n

\"Gabriella
Gabriella Sundar Singh (Image courtesy of Tarragon Theatre)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As for the play itself, Roberts often resorts to heightened poetic language which at times is obscure and elliptical, particularly for the chorus (including their names), but he also has some wonderfully descriptive prose, such as Electra\u2019s \u201cMenelaus loves Helen like a dog eating its own shit\u201d, or \u201cHelen is always camera-ready\u201d, or \u201cHistory is written between events\u201d. Tyndareus calls the House of Atreus \u201ca self-consuming family\u201d, while Orestes states that \u201cShame is a form of exile\u201d. Menelaus calls Orestes \u201ca study of rage\u201d. Unfortunately, judging from the chat room, there was confusion about the ending which features Orestes\u2019 disembodied head. Thus, as a whole, the play tends to take a surreal rather than linear approach so you have to work at following what the characters are saying. I\u2019m not sure that Roberts succeeds in dissecting the meaning of identity and loss thereof. On the other hand, we do get a very strong picture of a dysfunctional family warring within itself. As for the interactive elements, while it is interesting following specific characters, what this adds to the story as a whole is open to argument. Nonetheless, the play is helped by excellent acting throughout, particularly from Pellerin, Clarkin and Fox.<\/p>\n

The greatest take-away from Tarragon\u2019s Orestes<\/em> is the fact that the company went for broke on creating original digital live online theatre, a risky venture if ever there was. From a visual viewpoint, the complex production is superb, especially in how all the diverse elements come together and move through real-time.<\/p>\n

As viewer Jeff wrote in the chat room: \u201cSo great to attend a live opening night during this pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The greatest take-away from Tarragon\u2019s Orestes is the fact that the company went for broke on creating original digital live online theatre, a risky venture if ever there was.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":70337,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[38476,52,62],"tags":[39318,39324,13714],"yst_prominent_words":[39319,39302,39323,39322,30412,34505,39321,39320,39313,39305,39311,39303,11181,27257,39310,37805,13702,39308,39307,39312],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/02\/Tarragon_Theatre_Orestes.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-iir","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70335"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70335"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":70344,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70335\/revisions\/70344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70335"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=70335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}