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State of the Arts: Helen Lawrence recreates Vancouver's gritty past

Hard-boiled tale of loyalty, money and politics premieres at the Stanley
helen lawrence
Helen Lawrence’s hard-boiled tale of loyalty, money and politics premieres at the Stanley theatre March 13.

It’s the production Arts Club Theatre’s artistic managing director Bill Millerd was particularly looking forward to last fall.

Helen Lawrence, the theatrical debut for both internationally acclaimed visual artist Stan Douglas and award-winning screenwriter Chris Haddock, makes its world premiere at the Arts Club Theatre’s Stanley stage March 13 to April 13 before performances in Montreal, Toronto, Munich and Edinburgh.

Set in old worlds of the Hotel Vancouver and Hogan’s Alley, the city’s former locus for gambling and vice, Helen Lawrence is a hard-boiled tale of loyalty and money that highlights the city’s politics in a time of upheaval, circa 1948.

The fictional story draws on the real-life inquiry into police corruption in Vancouver at this time. Douglas wanted to explore the transition from wartime, with all its shady transactions, to the supposedly wholesome 1950s.

“I do work to learn things, to research and understand more about certain eras or places and to have an experience I can’t have any another way,” he said.

Audiences for Helen Lawrence will also experience theatre in a new way.  

All of the action will happen behind a scrim and within the enclosure of a blue-screen stage. A projector will cast virtual sets while cameras on stage capture live action for projections so the story unfolds simultaneously as a film and a play.

“As the camera tracks, the background tracks, too. So you actually see them as if they’re moving in space,” said Douglas, who’s renowned for his photography and projection-based work that often examines modernism, historical and social narratives and political incidents, such as his photo recreation of the 1971 Gastown Riot. “It’s like visual polyphony where we’re having two ideas at the same time. We’re having a direct view of the actors on stage from the audiences perspective, however the cameras are often off to the side so you’re seeing it from two angles simultaneously.”

Writer, director and producer Haddock, whose TV credits include Da Vinci’s Inquest, Intelligence and Boardwalk Empire, couldn’t resist the challenge when Douglas asked him to co-create a story to be told via a mixed-media production.

“You don’t often get the opportunity to take the risks of actually breaking the established forms,” said Haddock, who also loves that while audience members will see the characters in the flesh, the projections of them are in black and white.

“Black and white’s intimate,” he said. “Hopefully it gives you some kind of distance to reflect upon some things and hopefully it also pulls you in.”

Douglas is excited to see his vision realized. “The technical, when it works, feels like these people on stage are making this world themselves,” he said.

Helen Lawrence boasts a cast of 12 that includes Crystal Balint, Sterling Jarvis and Nicholas Lea, a bevy of 3D artists and visuals that Haddock describes as “riveting and sumptuous.” Yet it’s not the 70-millimetre visuals Haddock wants to linger with visitors when they leave.

“I want them to wonder what the characters are doing now,” he said.

Haddock, who was fatigued with the flu last week, expects to be clutching an airsickness bag, his stomach aflutter with nerves, during the opening shows.

Still, he wouldn’t have denied himself the opportunity to stretch his skills.

“That’s probably what Stan and I have in common… the actual willingness to risk,” he said. “A lot of people aren’t interested in getting better, they’re just interested in getting a better paycheque. I don’t think you’ll achieve either without being willing to go forward into the unknown just armed with your little bag of craft.”

For more information, see artsclub.com.

crossi@vancourier.com
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