Radio Play (2008)

Dance Plays

May 9

Though I’d known her for many years prior, I think that Denise Clarke and I began talking about the possibility of a project together following the High Performance Rodeo presentation of a two-part evening by me featuring Doug Varone’s theatrical and highly stylized duet In Thine Eyes (with Larry Hahn), alongside the Sarah Chase dancestory The Disappearance of Right and Left.

Denise is a crazy-talented actor/playwright/director/dancer/choreographer whose genius as a creator, collaborator, performer, and mentor has been honed through her decades of research and realization as part of the renegade theatre company One Yellow Rabbit. Musing upon possible premises for a performance piece, she came up with the story of a modern dancer aged-out of the profession and on the hunt for a new job, and developed a script titled Radio Play. Denise’s program notes capture the spirit of the performance romp: A comedy, a self-reflexive gesture, a fable, an absurdist romance, a lecture-demo. A big change. A bigger fear. In the end it comes down to two people and a table and the future that is waiting. The sound design and composition by fellow rabbit, the late Richard McDowell, provided a tightly-built cue-heavy sonic scaffolding for the action, and Denise’s highly specific plan for lighting was realized by Lee Anholt.

In the end a complicated series of circumstances meant that I had three different performance partners for Radio Play. Larry Hahn premiered with me at Ottawa’s Nouvelle Scene as part of the 2008 Canada Dance festival; actor/playwright Michael Healey did a week-long run in Toronto as part of Soulpepper’s Young Centre Presents; and finally actor/dancer/playwright/choreographer Conrad Alexandrowicz performed with me at the High Performance Rodeo; each of these brilliant performance partners lining up for the extraordinary opportunity to be on stage in a work written and directed by Denise Clarke. - PB

“…the performance by Baker serves to remind us of just what great artistry is – and how well it can be displayed in a work as good as this.” Bob Clark, The Calgary Herald

Performers in video: Peggy Baker and Michael Healey. Archival footage shot in the Michael Young Theatre, Young Centre, Toronto ON, November 2008.

credits

created by:
Denise Clarke

sound design and composition:
Richard McDowell

lighting design:
Lee Anholt

costume design:
Caroline O’Brien

original performers:
Peggy Baker & Larry Hahn

subsequent performers:
Michael Healey
Conrad Alexandrowicz

awards

Winner, 2009 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Choreography in a Play or Musical, General Theatre Division:
Denise Clarke & Peggy Baker

premiere

Ottawa ON
June 8 & 9, 2008
La Nouvelle Scène
Canada Dance Festival