I love everything about going to the Pumphouse Theatre.  I love the setting, a former pumphouse nestled amongst the trees along the Bow River, which admittedly, if you are first approaching it in the dark, is a trifle disconcerting, lying as it does on the edge of an industrial area that feels distinctly abandoned and sinister on a winter night.  But the parking is easy and ample and right on the doorsteps of the Pumphouse Theatre itself. 

 The theatres themselves (there are two at the Pumphouse) are the type of intimate space that I gravitate toward.  There is a vast difference between watching a play at a luxe, but cavernous, auditorium and being immersed in the drama unfolding quite literally at your feet in a close and personal space.

 That’s one of the reasons that I am so excited to be spending a bit of time at the Pumphouse Theatre in the upcoming weekends.  That, and the excitement over the plays themselves.

 Tonight, I see Bloody Sunday: Scenes from the Saville Enquiry.  This is a courtroom drama, presented by the Liffey Players, about the aftermath of the1972 Bloody Sunday shootings, in which 26 Irish civil rights protesters were shot by British forces, 14 of them fatally.  This of course is generally seen as the incident which cemented support for the Irish Republican Army, and touched off the subsequent decades of turmoil within Ireland.  It should be a fascinating play.

 Next weekend, I am thrilled to be once again attending a production by Sage Theatre. Each time I see one of Sage Theatre’s plays, I ask myself how they can possibly surpass it, what they can conceivably offer for their next production.  This of course, is the theatre group who started off this season with their stunning production of Trainspotting.  But they are a clever bunch, and rather than try to reproduce the experience with their next production, the troupe instead completely reinvented themselves with The Dazzle, the heartbreaking and fascinating true story of two brothers who barricaded themselves in their house for decades. 

 The only similarity between The Dazzle and the current production of Music for Contortionist seems to be the fact that they are both based on the lives of actual people.  While The Dazzle was largely a drawing room piece, Music for Contortionist would appear to be distinctly burlesque.  It is based on the cabaret performances of Valeska Gert, an avant-garde dancer from the Weimar-era scene.  Gert appears to have been the original performance artist, incorporating social satire and the breakdown of artistic norms in new and often grotesquely different forms.  Her dances took on popular dance and cultural entertainment of the day and exaggerated their focal points to extreme and bizarre measures.

 I can’t wait to see how Sage Theatre handles this one.