Reviewed by James Karas
Before you enter the playing area of the Coal Mine Theatre, you are asked to take your shoes off. In the theatre, you see a slender woman in white slacks and blouse with blonde/grey hair covering most of her face. She appears to be in a trance as she expands her arms and moves slowly. The playing area is a circle with a couple of dozens of bowls full of stones from pebbles to fist-sized and a round red rug in the centre. The audience of about 60 sit in a circle around the playing area.
The woman crouches down and her face touches the floor as she starts wailing. She stands up and starts telling us stories.
The woman in the centre is Jani Lauzon who has created and is the sole performer of Prophecy Fog, stories about native beliefs, their relationship with nature and her personal experiences. There is a large screen above the playing area that shows images of the sky, a desert, the Giant Rock in the Mojave Desert as well as videos of the author and her daughter.
Jani Lauzon in Prophecy Fog. Photo: Dahlia Katz
The fabled Giant Rock is a central image in Prophecy Fog and Lauzon tells us about Frank Critzer who dug out a home near the rock and lived there and about George van Tassel who lived there as well. The Giant Rock fractured in two and has suffered the indignity of graffiti and Lauzon shows us the swastikas, obscenities and white supremacist garbage scrawled on it.
Lauzon treats the rocks as if they are living objects. If you listen to them, they will speak to you or you will be able to communicate with them. She tells us stories of elders from whom she heard stories about our relations with nature. She slowly empties all the bowls in the playing area and she chooses pebbles and larger stones and holds them up lovingly and puts them on her body.
Lauzon is an outstanding storyteller and she tells us about her background of being raised in a foster home until she graduated from high school, about going to the Mojave Desert with her daughter and about her love of and close relationship with nature, something that we seem to have lost but one day may rediscover.
Prophecy Fog is an amazing creation of movement, music and storytelling that I understood only partially because I admit shamefacedly, I lack a sufficient background in indigenous mythology and culture.
On her website Jani Lauzon is described as Writer/Actor/Director/Musician/Puppeteer and a multidisciplinary artist of Métis/French/Finnish ancestry. Gee, is that all?
_________________
Prophecy Fog by Jani Lauzon in a production by Paper Canoe Projects continues until December 10, 2023, at the Coal Mine Theatre, 2076 Danforth Ave. Toronto, (northwest corner of Woodbine and Danforth) www.coalminetheatre.com or www.papercanoeprojects.com
No comments:
Post a Comment