A bit of local theatre if you happen to be in Toronto. While we don't normally post 'live theatre' news around these parts (outside of the Evil Dead musical that is), fans of Guy Maddin's films will immediately recognize regular collaborator, actor Louis Negin. The actor has in the past lorded over the Sissy-Boy Slap Party, cut off Guy Maddin's hands in Cowards Bend the Knee and was foreteller of fate in The Saddest Music in the World. At the premiere of the Brand Upon the Brain in Toronto, he was the films live narrator.
It certainly does seem like Negin was taking tips from Maddin on stylized fantasy-fractured autobiography; and after hooking up with theatre director Marie Brassard we have this one-man-show:
A collaboration between two artists, The Glass Eye is a play around a play that combines art and documentary, dreams and reality. concern[ing] the adventures of a young gay man who escapes the restrictions of life in Toronto in the 1940's by inventing an alter ego and moving to Montreal, where he gains entrée into the glamorous world of night-clubs, showgirls and gangsters. Rooted in Negin's own childhood fantasies, it was in part a joyous homage to a now-departed era. But Brassard saw in the piece a larger and more intriguing possibility: a journey into the mind and memories of Negin himself. The result, built around Negin's original text, is a wide ranging reflection on celebrity, theatre, movies, sex and love - and the effect on them all over the passage of time. It is, in Negin's words, "a collage of memories, dreams, fantasies and truth."
The Glass Eye is playing on stage at the Enwave Theatre at the Habourfront Centre, 231 Queens Quay West on June 10, 11, 12, 13 if you want a taste of it.