Applause for Pollock

[Anne F. Nothof]

Sharon Pollock's latest play, "Moving Pictures" opened at the Betty
Mitchell Theatre in Calgary on March 11, and runs until March 27. It is
part of the "Theatre Junction" season, commissioned by director Brian
Richmond for Guardian Spring Productions as a coproduction, and will
next play in Toronto. This is an extraordinary production in every
respect.  Many of Pollock's themes resurface - the "Pollock's", as one
of her daughters calls them - the possiblity and consequences of choice,
art and life as illusion and lies, "playing" a life in retrospect in the
process of coming to terms with the past, the history of a life as a
comment on social and cultural struggles in Canada, a portrait of the
artist as an embattled and limited visionary, the price of pursuing a
vision, the consequences to a woman's personal life when she pursues her
vision.  Pollock uses as the scenario the life of silent film actress
and producer, Nell Shipman, born in Victoria in 1982.  Her life is told
as a series of "moving pictures" and enacted by three actors - the
young, middle-aged, and old versions of "Nell" which interact and
comment on each other's dreams and delusions.  The recurrent leitmotif
is spoken in the voice of Thomas Edison: the definition of film as "the
illusion of continuous movement through persistence of vision."  This
"persistence of vision" is both Nell's strength and her weakness.  She
cannot compromise it, and so compromises almost everything else in her
personal life.  "Moving Pictures" is the portrait of an artist as older
woman -- Pollock poses questions which continue to preoccupy her: "Can
you be an artist if your work can't find an audience?" "What motivates
an artist when there is no recognition?"  "Why make personal sacrifices
for a vision?"  "Was it worth it?"  "What is 'it'?"

The actors were superlative - the intensity of their performance was
rivetting:
Helen (young Nell) - Shawna Burnett
Nell - Thea Gill
Shipman - Lory Wainburg
Man 1 (Bert Van Tuyle, an American movie producer and Nell's lover) -
Tony Munch
Man 2 (Nell's first husband) - Joe-Norman Shaw

Stage and lighting design - Terry Gunvordahl
   -This was a highly imaginative and versatile set which suggested the
"illusion" of film and Nell's vision through a film projected on scene
flats (sr), titles projected (Brechtian style) on a white curtain
(sl),and a phonograph player and wind machine behind an opaque black
curtain.  A clothes rack with costumes was placed cs.  The area of
"illusion" was constructed on a raised stage in the background.  In the
foreground, at the level of the audience, the playing space, like an
"orchestra" suggested the "reality" of Nell's life through desks,
steamer trunk, man's hat and megaphone, and a bottle of booze.

Run, fly, swim to see "Moving Pictures" - the best of Canadian Theatre.

- Anne Nothof, a fan