CANADA
- A visual, blackly humorous music performance about dreamland, fleeing, survival and the utopian land of Canada
CANADA is a performance for adults/16+ youth, which explores new territory - a form of immersive, staged podcast inspired by graphic novels and object-animation. It features live/recorded music, text (in English) and a through-going, evocative sound design. In a blacked-out space the voice of a female first-person narrator leads us through the piece. She tells of her dreams and concerns, of survival, inherited trauma and of the utopian land of Canada. This is director Nina Kareis' personal story, a magical-realist collage of memories of her upbringing in Aarhus, Denmark in the 1970s. The early stirrings of anti-immigrant sentiment arouse feelings of unease in her, and awaken a buried trauma inherited from her Austrian-Jewish family’s experience in the aftermath of World War II. She begins to plan her escape. CANADA draws parallels between the personal and the political, the historical and the contemporary. It is a multimedia experience with both personal and universal resonance.
"Canada" is driven by a kind of longing and exudes an exquisite sense of visual aesthetics..powerfully and sensually articulating important and absolutely current issues of. racism, xenophobia, fleeing, integration and dreams of freedom.
Beautiful ...Elegant. Livingstones Kabinet ... serve as a role model for simplicity and clarity, in a performance which neither lectures, or talks down to the audience.
So much theatre is just trivia and nonsense. But every now and then you can sense a seriousness behind words and actions. This is overwhelmingly the case with Livingstones Kabinet's visual performance CANADA..
This piece is a must-see, not least for it's completely unique narrative form, which combines a light, porous narrative with just the right amount of painful edge and invites us into the kind of image-rich world the like of which we rarely get a chance to experience.
Thought-provoking,...charming...atmospheric. A fine, non-pushy voice in the seemingly endless debate about refugees and foreigners in Denmark.
The human voice is a wonderful thing; precise and unadorned as it is in CANADA at Bådteatret, whether that be Nina Kareis' recorded speaks or Pete Livingstone's beguiling falsetto. Here, it serves as invitation to let go and to allow yourself to be drawn into this theatrical picture show.
On stage: Pete Livingstone, Amia Miang, Bo Carlsson
Speaks and Directorr: Nina Kareis
Set Design : Johan Kølkjær
Composert: Pete Livingstone
Sound Design: Erik Christoffersen
Lighting Design: Martin Danielsen
Press Release CANADA- (DK) (PDF)
