JANUS
November 13th, 2021
End of the West Collective + artists and spectators
What if myth were not a lie but a story truer than truth? This powerfully intimate work enacts wonder, desire and denial across cosmic, cultural and artistic thresholds, with puppets, masked dancers, and digital animation. A specially designed theatre for one heightens the drama of encounter with this elusive deity of doorways.
Janus dramatizes one ancient campfire story told through different cultural expressions and developed through three different personal lenses, individual histories and arts practices.
End of the West Collective
What if myth were not a lie, but a story truer than truth?
This preview screening and conversation with artists takes us backstage into the creative process of devising a new intimate dramatic work.
The story features an encounter with Janus, the two-faced and powerful yet limited deity of doorways. Destiny brings this god and a human together in a cave-like workshop, though they remain obscured from each other’s sight by a mortal veil. Making an opening for them to truly see each other will require a magic outside of either of their powers of creation.
This single story is told through different cultural expressions and developed through three different personal lenses, individual histories, and arts practices. Bharatanatyam, Indigenous art, modern theatre, and spectator participation coalesce to become creatively reborn in a theatrical womb-like cave – a specially designed theatre for one. Puppets, masked dancers, film, sound, shadow and light heighten the intimacy of encounter.
Within this sacred space Destiny is questioned and spectators are challenged to experience the embodied reality of myth.
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End of the West Collective is a collaboration of neighbors in Winnipeg’s West End who met around a backyard fire pit during the COVID pandemic in summer 2020. The collective includes a theatre director, lighting designer, classical Indian dancer, and architect.
Created in partnership with Theatre Projects Manitoba, End of the West Collective will premiere Janus as “In Time” in Winnipeg from December 2nd to 12th 2021.
Theatre Projects Manitoba and End of the West gratefully acknowledge support from the Canada Council for the Arts, Manitoba Arts Council, Winnipeg Arts Council, and Manitoba 150.
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Jacqueline Loewen is a theatre maker and founding member of Hot Thespian Action, the multiple Canadian Comedy Award nominated physical sketch group. She has worked extensively as a fight choreographer and movement coach on every stage in Winnipeg, plus Bard on the Beach (Vancouver) Can Stage (Toronto), and Kansas State University. She has won two Winnipeg Theatre Awards for outstanding choreography. She has adapted and directed site specific operas for Manitoba Underground Opera, Little Opera Company, and Flipside Opera, and created several experimental physical theatre pieces, notably La Belle Laide (nominated for Harry S. Rintoul award), and Tree in the Closest Distance (residency at The Sawdust Collector, Vancouver).
Scott Henderson is a professional lighting designer who has worked extensively with every professional theatre in Winnipeg and many others across Canada, including Stratford, Shaw, Belfry, Globe, Theatre Calgary, The Citadel, and the Canadian Stage Co. He has also designed for a number of independent productions. Trained at Ryerson, Mr. Henderson is currently a member of the Associated Designers of Canada (and has served on its board) and IATSE. He teaches Lighting Design for the University of Winnipeg Department of Theatre and Film.
Avinash (Nash) Muralidharan Pillai Saralakumari started his training in Bharatanatyam at the age of ten. He has won many prizes in the field and expanded his horizon to other Indian dance forms such as Kuchipudi and Kathakali. The most exciting part for Nash, when it comes to classical dances, is the ability to tell a story through movement. Indian classical dances provide the best opportunity to learn that correlation through its vast vocabulary of hand gestures, facial expression and body movement.
David Thomas is Anishinaabe, a member of Peguis First Nation. As an architectural designer, he is currently involved in developing the former Kapyong Barracks master plan with the Treaty One Development Corporation and the Indigenous People’s Garden at Assiniboine Park, part of Canada’s Diversity Garden. Along with Indigenous architecture projects throughout Canada, David has presented in New Zealand and the UK and was part of UNCEDED, Canada’s entry of Indigenous Architects for the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale.
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Janus is part of the Theatres of ArchImagination contribution to SunShip: The Arc That Makes The Flood Possible, as part of the Arts Letters & Numbers exhibition in the CITYX Venice Italian Virtual Pavilion of the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale.
