"Guilty!"
Matthew Power, Garry Williams, Keelin Jack, Zach Faye, Jackie Hanlin, Kim Parkhill, Clara Bullock, Kristi Anderson and Amy Reitsma.
We opened The Halifax Hearings opened on November 11, 2010, at the FEZ-Berlin as part of the programming for Geld Global: Wie bestimmt Geld unsere Welt? (Pictures to follow). Our second performance followed on November 12th. Keelin Jack designed the lighting for this performance, assisted by Jackie Hanlin; musical arrangements and composition by Andrew Chandler.
The play deals with Globalization, seen through the eyes of a 17-year old student, preparing for a class presentation. In a series of scenes, the play examines our propensity, as global inhabitants, to trivialize and ignore the increasingly obvious flaws of the system, including an exclusionary prosperity, rampant consumerism, the ever-present media's tendency towards sensationalism and advertising, as well as the proliferation of ignorance and apathy in a world progressively devoid of a functional, common morality.
"Change?"
Andrew Chandler as The Bum and Jackie Hanlin as the Student
For the FEZ's Opening Ceremonies Nov. 9-12, we performed an excerpt from our show, as well as the Four Directional Song of Doubt for Five Voices, using the global consumer economy as our theme.
At the museum FLUXUS+, we performed for an audience of enthusiastic patrons during Café DaPoPo on Friday night. Gallery owner Heinrich Liman and his guests ordered a smattering of musical treats. Our audience included Garry's mother, visual artist Ann Noël, his sister Penelope and daughter Iris; as well as international artists and performers from Switzerland, Poland, Australia, Israel and the USA.
On the weekend, we sang songs from Nova Scotia, and invited the kids at the FEZ to participate by helping us find German words from around the giant foyer, which we then used to create an improvised musical "Sex-Tangle", a DaPoPo specialty.
On Thursday Oct. 28th - Saturday Oct. 30th, we held three public readings of The Halifax Hearings: Globalization on Trial. The play reads just under an hour, and the story is clear. Our audiences participated in guided, post show Q&A periods, providing useful prods and inroads towards revising and strengthening the script. The two longest scenes, the Court Room Scene and the Post-Now, gave rise to the most specific points of discussion. Regrouping on Saturday afternoon, we were able to identify a few rewriting challenges for the next two weeks.