Monster Makers will be premiering this June in Kitchener-Waterloo. Darren O’Donnell of Mammalian Diving Reflex shares with us how Monster Makers came to be.
The Monster Makers was conceived in Turbhe, a slum in the suburbs of Mumbai. We went there to work with kids at Aarambh, a school and skills-building centre for women and children run by accountant Shobha Murthy. A couple of months before, we had sent out a bunch of emails, looking for kids in India to work with and Shobha was up for whatever we had to offer. So, Natalie De Vito, Stephanie Comilang, Rebecca Picherack and I went there in December 2007 to attempt to build a performance.
The initial idea was to create a one-person show for me to perform based on what the kids what they wanted to see me do onstage. This proved difficult due to language barriers and a lack of understanding of what exactly theatre is. Bollywood, these kids knew, but experimental Canadian theatre wasn’t really something that was on their radar. They tried to teach me some dance moves, but their weakness as choreographers was only exceeded by my weakness as a dancer.
We did a bunch of other things: we made videos of me whispering texts about the difficulty of friendship in their ears as they tried to mimic my English, the raw footage of which is probably really great but remains unscreened – we should really get to that. We asked the kids to walk home and we followed them through their tight winding neighbourhoods and shot this complex journey. And, of course, we played with them, putting them on a plastic mat and spinning them around the room. One day we decided to give the kids a bunch of makeup and I laid there while they did whatever they wanted. When they were done, the only thing that I could possible be was a monster. So they took me out and I terrorized the neighbourhood, led proudly by the children through the muddy streets of their community. I thought about the power of creation, the thrill that is generated when artists produce something that takes their neighbours by delightful surprise and then I tried to eat their brains.
When we got back to Toronto, we all sat around Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and wondered what the hell we were going to do with this one man show idea. We were screwed! We combed through our memories, taking an inventory of everything that had happened to us in India and all agreed that the monster was the most memorable. The idea for the show dropped in pretty much fully formed. We had a beginning, middle and an end. Lots of details have since been fleshed out and, of course, the details are where things either get great or they don’t, but the general structure came as a package.
A big thanks to Shobha and all the kids at Aarambh, to whom we proudly dedicate The Monster Makers: you guys are the best and I’d be happy to rip off your heads and eat your brains any day of the week. See you soon.
Dates to Remember
March 24 | Full Festival Announcement - check website
March 29 | Pitch Application Deadline
June 9 – 19, 2010 | Magnetic North Theatre Festival in Kitchener-Waterloo
