When you walk into the Theatre Lab at Grant MacEwan and take your seat, the show has already started. Actors engage with audience members, chocolates are handed out, I played a game with one of those origami fortune-tellers (
I would be disquieted... learning this made me... disquieted), some people helped the actors run lines, one told us about her research... There was a lot happening and it set the tone for the rapid fire, multi-mini-scenes that make up Caryl Churchill's play,
Love & Information. The show promises 22 actors, 100 roles and 57 plays centered around the themes of love and information. It's a good choice for the student actors, forcing them to shift quickly from scene to scene and to work as an ensemble as they tell these little stories. Director Dave Horak has wisely kept the pacing quick and the transitions sharp so that these little plays flip like pages in a book. The 90 minute show never drags and each scene seems as brief or as long as they need to be. The set (designed by Megan Koshka) is flexible and used elegantly, accented by cool mood-enhancing video projections (designed by Scott Spidell & Robin Ayles).
Scenes I enjoyed most (no spoilers) included a monologue about a red flower, a scene about a memorization technique, a saucy scene about puppy love, finding a lost connection in music, ex-lovers recalling where they have made love, a discussion about pain, cocktails and chickens, the nature of God, a recitation of DNA (or was it RNA?)... There were lots of great moments and fragments which made you wonder about love and information and whether love was information or whether information helped you to love.
Well worth a night out - take a friend and you will have a lot to talk about afterwards as every scene seemed like a jumping off point for a larger discussion.
Love and Information runs January 31 to February 10, 2018 at the Theatre Lab in Allard Hall, 11110 104 Avenue.
Tickets are available here or at the Box Office.
$25 ($15 for students, $20 seniors 55+)
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