WINNIPEG — The University of Winnipeg’s Department of Theatre and Film continues its 2011/2012 theatre season February 7-11 with 10 playlets by Howard Barker that trace the scale ofcontemporary barbarity: The Possibilities. The play will be directed by faculty member Christopher Brauer, designed by a team of student designers and recent graduates under the mentorship of Professor David Hewlett and Professor Tim Babcock, and performed by the third-year honours acting class with technical support from the Department’s production students.
The Possibilitiesis a play for dark times. Set on the fringes of various wars from the past, present, and future, the play avoids politics and instead focuses on the human capacity for transformation in the face of catastrophe. Barker says of the play: “I recouped from a series of appalling situations a will to human dignity and complexity that came precisely from the absence of conventional politics. The unpredictability of the human soul, resistant to ideology, and the tortures of logic, became a source of hope, even where death was inevitable.”
The Possibilities is played out over 10 short, unrelated scenes. Even period and location are only vaguely hinted at. As a result, the set is more a landscape that a series of specific locations. Each scene explores Barker’s thematic territory by setting the characters in a context of impending (or actual) catastrophe: a British Lieutenant is confronted by a woman from a Crimean village he is about to destroy; a Russian Emperor is obsessed by his incompetence on the battlefield and yearns for assassination; a covert bookseller in Nazi Germany hesitates to sell his books for fear of capture and of the knowledge being misused; Kosovar rug weavers force themselves to continue weaving in the face of the invasion of their city. In each situation, the characters are faced with a huge range of possibilities. “The achievement of Barker’s work has been its exemplification of the obligation of choice or refusal for the audience and performers alike,” wrote David Rabey in Howard Barker, Politics and Desire.
This production presents exciting challenges for every area of study within the department. Over 20 costumes are being built by the costuming class for the 11-actor cast. The play is set in 10 different locations, demanding a student-built set that is flexible and evocative of a city under seige. This also requires a student-created lighting design that can reinforce the tone of each scene, create multiple locations, and combine the realism requested by each scene with evocative, trimmed down, stark, high theatrics.
The production’s scenery and props are designed by student Kelsey Noren with costumes by recent graduate Sean E. McMullen. Lighting design is by students Alison Fulmyk and Ksenia Broda-Milian.
Performances are Tuesday, February 7 through Friday, February 10 at 8:00 pm and Saturday, February 11 at 7:00 pm at the Asper Centre for Theatre and Film, 400 Colony Street, entrance off Balmoral Street. Admission is free but reservations are recommended.
Please call our 24-hour Reservation and Information Line at 204.786.9152 or visit The University of Winnipeg’s Department of Theatre and Film website at: http://theatre.uwinnipeg.ca.
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Patty Hawkins
Department of Theatre and Film
The University of Winnipeg
T: 204.786.9955
p.hawkins@uwinnipeg.ca
Christopher Brauer
Department of Theatre and Film
The University of Winnipeg
T: 204.786.9006
c.brauer@uwinnipeg.ca
