ON STAGE
What: Every Brilliant Thing
Where: Belfry Theatre, 1291 Gladstone Ave.
When: Dec. 2-22
Tickets: $35 from 250-385-6815 or www.belfry.bc.ca
There’s a social element woven into the DNA of Every Brilliant Thing, which opens next week at the Belfry Theatre.
The one-person show is built to create peer-to-peer engagement between star Dawn Petten and the audience. Seating for the performance has been reconfigured to increase the intimacy, and the in-the-round environment puts the audience right next to Petten at times during a highly emotional theatre experience. “We include the audience in all aspects,” said director Estelle Shook.
“The audience comes up [on stage] and plays parts in the play, so for the very practical accessibility, in-the-round is the best thing. It’s like a campfire, very primordial storytelling.”
Every Brilliant Thing is adapted from a short story written by Duncan Macmillan, who co-wrote the stage version with British comedian Jonny Donahoe. Donahoe starred in early productions as a man journeying into adulthood following the attempted suicide of his mother.
In the years since, Every Brilliant Thing has taken on a life of its own, with the protagonist switching genders, depending on the production. Though bits of dialogue have been “re-authored” to make Every Brilliant Thing more Victoria-centric, the core of the story remains unchanged in the Belfry’s version, which is based on the 2013 original.
The plot centres on when the story’s protagonist was a child who coped with her mother’s depression by making a list explaining why the world is such a beautiful place. The list is meant to clear the clouds dampening the worldview of the narrator and her mother.
That’s where the audience comes in, Shook said. Someone will be called upon to play Petten’s character as a seven-year-old who has just learned that her mother tried to kill herself; elsewhere, select attendees will shout out keywords, to which Petten will respond with an improvised take.
The point is to recreate the blur of mental-health issues, and how those whose loved ones struggle with it often have their own battles to contend with.
“Just about every good theatre experience is distilled down to great storytelling and a great relationship with the audience, in terms of engagement,” Shook said. “That could be a huge spectacle, or a one-person show. They both require really good storytelling. In that sense, this piece will appeal to anybody who loves theatre.”
Management at the Belfry took additional steps to ensure the live-theatre environment is a healthy one during Every Brilliant Thing’s Dec. 2-22 run. The shows will mark the first-ever “relaxed performances” at the Belfry, which are designed to present a stress-free sensory experience. Music plays a key role in the production (sound designer Brian Linds will be on stage at times, playing vinyl records on a turntable), but the volume will be kept low, out of respect for audience members not familiar with the audio and visual experience that is live theatre.
Audience members will also be permitted to come and go as they need to. At 65 minutes in length, Every Brilliant Thing is also shorter than most main-stage performances at the Belfry.
“We take that [relaxed environment] very seriously, and brought in experts to advise us,” Shook said. “We approached it very carefully and with a lot of respect for the high stakes of the material. But the play is written so sensitively and beautifully, it actually made a lot of our work redundant. We had some test audiences whose members had suffered from depression say they were not triggered at all, simply because it deals with a serious topic with so much joy.”
Petten’s performance enters into comedic terrain on occasion, which provides some relief, Shook said. While Every Brilliant Thing is technically about depression and suicide, Donahoe and Macmillan wrote the piece in a way that “it feels like it is about everything but,” she added.
“It is about hope. It is about survival, about the joy in life.”
