Like any date, don’t compare this one to the past
After a whirlwind, electric, expectation-defying first date—how do you plan your followup?
For actor, improviser and director Rebecca Northan, that’s a very visceral predicament. In 2009, she stumbled upon a career-making hit, Blind Date, in which Northan played a French rednosed clown named Mimi and performed the 90-minute play opposite an audience member as her love interest.
After eight years, countless tours including sold-out runs in London and New York City, and about 600 performances (Northan herself performing in about 400 of them), Blind Date has also created a new company — one which Northan now runs as artistic director — and even a new genre of performance.
Now, Spontaneous Theatre is unveiling a new show in Toronto at Tarragon Theatre, trading a first date at a romantic restaurant for a murder mystery at an isolated mansion in Undercover, which began previews on Tuesday.
At every performance, one audience member will be plucked from the crowd to take on the role of rookie detective, finding clues and following leads as Northan and her cast of five improvisers (including Undercover co-creator Bruce Horak) set up a story with the flavour of a true-crime page-turner.
Blind Date and Undercover may be under the same umbrella, but like any date, Northan says it’s best not to compare one to another — which she saw happening when Spontaneous Theatre premiered Legend Has It, a hero-quest show, in Calgary in 2014.
“You don’t say to Morris Panych, ‘Hm, Sextet, it wasn’t like 7 Stories.’ Why would you ever think that our two plays would be the same?”
“It’s like in the music industry, when people say ‘I liked U2’s first album but I hated U2’s second album.’ For an artist, it’s frustrating. Why would I continue doing the same thing?” she said from an Undercover rehearsal.
To Northan, an emerging force in Canadian theatre as a director and creator who won last year’s Crow’s Theatre RBC Rising Star Emerging Director Prize, “spontaneous theatre” is a new form worthy of professional respect and rigour.
But to audience members, especially those tapped to become the play’s leading actor, it’s still a new style that takes time to wrap their heads around.
“Currently the definition of spontaneous theatre is that we want to highlight a nonperformer in a lead role, and in a simple way, we want to take care of them and make sure they have a nice time,” Northan said.
“We try to find the balance between improvisation and total lack of structure, and on the other side of the scale, a structured narrative. There’s a framework that’s in place for the care and comfort of the audience member.”
With Undercover, the intimacy of a first date is swapped for the adventure of a mystery — like a colouring book, Northan said, the cast has created a narrative outline that the audience member chooses how to colour in, creating theories and investigating possible solutions.
And Northan confirms there is certainly a correct answer, and many incorrect answers, for the novice detective to arrive at; at one point Northan and Horak considered letting whatever conclusion a participant made be the solution to crack the case.
“We decided that wasn’t a very fun game to play,” she said. “You could have little wins, big wins, but at the end of the day, that you played detective in front of an audience for two hours is the biggest win.”
Therein lies the key entertaining element of spontaneous theatre — the simultaneous layers on top of each other in the action.
The audience not only gets a mystery story, but the added intrigue of witnessing one of their own take on this unexpected, nearly overwhelming task located on a set loaded with hidden clues, designed by escape room designer Glenn Davidson.
“The first, and biggest, mystery for the audience is how will this person get through this at all? You’re already leaning forward and intrigued to see how that unfolds,” she said.
The duality of spontaneous theatre is what triggered Northan into expanding Blind Date from an initial short experiment into the fullblown hit it eventually became. It’s also why Northan said she’s “addicted” to performing on stage with civilians, a feeling that she has to get used to sharing with a larger cast instead of her previous one-on-one dynamic.
“Blind Date came about as an accident, and as it evolved over time we thought there was something more to this than your average improv show that’s often disposable sketch comedy. There’s something bigger and more human and worthwhile, I think, in terms of saying to people ‘Remember how to play?’ ” she said.
For anyone ready to play detective, Undercover’s game will soon be afoot. Carly Maga is a Toronto Star theatre critic. She alternates the Wednesday Matinée column with critic Karen Fricker.