By Pepper Parr

January 18th, 2016

BURLINGTON, ON

There are traces of Charlie Chaplin, a sense that the mime Marcel Marceau is in the room as you watch a dancer/actor perform an art form that we are lucky to have on the stage of the Performing arts centre.

We wanted to watch Trevor Copp in a rehearsal setting and be in a position to write about his work before the public performances take place.

The nine acts, several are very short, were conceived by Copp who has been a strong consistent advocate the more in the way of opportunities to use the Performing Arts Centre. His day has come.

A time exposure of Trevor Copp on stage rehearsing for his four day run at the Performing Arts Centre.

Copp will perform in “Air” on Thursday the 21st at 7:30 pm; Friday the 22nd at 7:30 pm and on Saturday at both 2:00 pm and 7:30 pm. All performances are in the Community Theatre.

Robin Patterson directs, Kelly Wolf did the costume most of the photography in this article was done by Kaitlin Abeele.

The opening piece, a meditation on Air is superb. While the dance is good – it is the acting that comes across very strongly. The way Copp tells you that he is on a train looking out the windows is just a really fine piece of acting.

1. Opening: A meditation on Air: This piece is not only a fine performance but a delight. Copp takes toy through a number of emotions – you feel what he is conveying –his going up in the balloon was marvelous.

2. Starry Night; Painter Vincent Van Gogh on the verge of a breakthrough

3. The Stupendifying Giganticism of Mr. Small: On the way home, Mr. Small’s passion for the constellations fail to move a woman he meets on the way. A miraculous burst of growth suddenly makes anything possible.

4. Sometimes It Snows in April: Snapshots of the rise and fall of a relationship that starts by offering an umbrella in the rain.

5. Butterfly: A man’s obsession with figuring out how to fly is inspired by a run-in with a Butterfly.

6. Questica: Concept by Stephen Sass; A great search begins. This one didn’t work for me

7. That Time I Asked God a Question: A man’s death is just the beginning of his path to enlightenment.

9. The Stag Hunter : A hunter has visions of a stag as he tracks it deep in the woods.
This is a very powerful performance – it might need a little more work and some refinement – but it is more than well worth watching at this point in its life.

What am I about to see if I buy a ticket?
A series of high impact physical stories: One spontaneously expands to galactic size and climbs the stars. One falls in love. One hunter becomes the hunted. One flies. One dies. ‘Air’ explores the connections we have through the simple act of breathing. Physical theatre performer Trevor Copp uses movement to launch into places where words cannot follow.

It isn’t magic – but it is in the air. An artist with just a bare chair as a prop and an imagination attached to a body that can move with grace and artistry. Try not to miss this one.

What do you mean by ‘Physical Theatre’?
Copp explains: “I spent a lot of time debating the use of ‘Mime’ to describe what I do – because this word is a kind of marketing death. Mime sounds like a thing trapped in an invisible box which is, in turn, trapped in the ‘70s. How did that happen?

‘Our cultural memory of Mime isn’t kind. I was busking (right on the streets of Hamilton) in full classic stripes and white face once and had to cross the street when a car sped up drastically. It was a near miss, and the driver yelled out ‘Mime! 2000 points!’

“But this wasn’t the mime I knew. I studied the Canadian Mime companies from the 70s, 80 and 90s, – and the work was amazing. Rich, varied, complex – and highly disciplined. My studies in Mime in Paris proved this to me further. But the work from Canada in that period is all but lost.

“I got a small but timely grant from the Hamilton Arts Council and started these pieces with Richard Beaune, a wonderful physical theatre practitioner. I went on to develop the production with core members of the Canadian Mime Theatre/Theatre Beyond Words Terry Judd, Robin Patterson, and Harro Maskow.
“Air’ emerges out of the chance to work with them: bringing back their work that inspires me, inventing work under their direction, and getting a chance to work with some of the unsung masters of Theatre in Canada.

“My dream is to create work that takes their theatre and puts it back in dialogue with our time. I ask big questions, hopefully well enough to provoke even bigger ones. I want us back sitting around the fire beside our basic longings: to fly, to die, to want impossible things, to move beyond. Movement has taken me there. I hope to show you what I mean.”

In a comment made by a reader to an advance piece we wrote on the production the ticket price was an issue – at $36 it is certainly more than a movie. See Copp now at $36 – it will cost you three times that at some point in the future and you will be able to see a great before he was discovered.

Director Robin Patterson on the left and production manager Courtney Pyke talk through a lighting and sound issue during rehearsal.

Director Robin Patterson put the performance Copp gives in context – explaining what mime was and what it has become. “Mime’ is not one rarified, historical kind of theatre” Patterson explains, “but rather a range of modern styles of physical theatre with many names. A story might be told by using gesture language, by drawing images in the air, or by carefully ordering a series of actions often supported by text, music, sound effects and/or projections. Pure Mime is the style in which a solo actor on a bare stage creates visual poetry.

“For the audience, the magic of ‘Pure Mime’ is seeing the actor create something out of nothing. For the actor, the joy is in devising a very specific story out of nothing – nothing but air, amazing physical skill and incredible ingenuity. There are no props or set pieces except what the performer is able to define by gesture, action, rhythm and intent.

“Trevor Copp blends the two styles to bring us ‘Mime for the 21st Century”.