The undercurrents theatre festival bills itself as “theatre below the mainstream.” It’s a festival of boundary-pushing theatre by both emerging and established creators that gives creators a chance to stage their new works.
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High school students are using theatre to keep the stories of abuse and perseverance at Bell High School alive at Ottawa’s Fringe Festival.
A member of Greenland’s Inuit community, Vivi Sørensen said she was compelled to properly tell the stories of Indigenous Peoples. “My main reason for wanting to direct is the fact that our stories … are always told from outside. And I felt like there’s a misportrayal, there’s something that’s wrong.”
There is enough personal and professional intrigue to earn the play’s description as being about “the abuse of power, political expediency, and the masks we wear to carry on as if everything is as it should be.” I think, acutely aware of my privilege as a white cisgender male, the key word here is abuse.
Although improv is, well, improvisational, there’s a lot of work that goes into preparing for a show. Campbell described it as tools to keep in your back pocket—knowledge of how stories progress, different genres and styles to perform, and other tricks and tools learned from plenty of practice.
“It’s a release—it’s very different from what I normally do at school … I just get to come to forget everything—here I can be some crazy, wild character.”—Sarah Robach, fifth-year biology student.
“I think a lot of them were intrigued by the story, by the text, by the way it was written because it’s not your regular realistic drama—it goes way beyond that,” explained director Melina Buziak. “The characters often break the fourth wall and refer directly to the audience and the text is really intriguing.”
This Ottawa-based festival gives students, and new performers a chance to try new things on stage.
What begins as a “safari of other people’s pain and suffering,” as Mtuli put it, turns into the photojournalist intensely following the illegal romance of Alexander, an ethnic Serb, and Mirela, a Muslim.
Undercurrents is a non-mainstream theatre festival in the heart of downtown Ottawa.
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