Tag Archives: PuSh Festival

Creating The Idiot- An interview

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The following is reprinted from PuShing it, the blog of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival.

Monday, January 9, 2012

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE IDIOT CREATORS DIRECTOR JAMES FAGAN TAIT AND COMPOSER JOELYSA PANKANEA

Both “Crime and Punishment” and now “The Idiot” mark a certain production style in your body of work. How did it start?

JAMES FAGAN TAIT: I had just finished working in the Downtown East Side with over 80 actors in a play, and I had done a few Ann Jellicoe-type community plays – one on Toronto Island, one in the Downtown East Side [In the Heart of a City] and six in Enderby with the Splatsin First Nations band and the City of Enderby – and I started believing in the power of large community and music and many people on stage of different variety. I realized that large shows with just a group of white professional actors didn’t have the same same resonance for me anymore. Camyar [Chai at Neworld] said that their mandate was diversity and I said “Can we have another field of diversity on stage: community artists, students, professional artists and artists who are not Equity?” So we did Crime and Punishment and the result was significant. We’re pursuing the same mandate with The Idiot: to create a culture in the cast.

Where did the idea for adapting “The Idiot” come from?

JOELYSA PANKANEA: I think Jimmy always felt it made sense after Crime and Punishment. He used to tell me back then, “We have to do The Idiot! That’s the next one!” So something about it was right for him.Continue reading→

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot

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In a world obsessed with money, power, and sexual conquest, is a sanatorium the only place for a saint?

The award-winning team that brought you Crime and Punishment in 2005 returns with the world-premiere of a new adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s comic social critique, The Idiot.

The Idiot tells the story of the strange Prince Lyov Nikolayevich Myshkin – a person who is entirely and completely good. After four years convalescing in Switzerland, Myshkin returns almost cured of epilepsy and the “idiocy” it created in him. The moment his train crosses onto Russian soil, his adventure with love, truth and the whole rotten saga of human existence begins. He becomes enamored with Rogozhin, who himself is obsessed by Natasha Fillippovna, a beautiful woman with an unfortunate reputation. Scorned by the society of St. Petersburg for his generosity and innocence, Myshkin finds himself at the centre of a struggle fueled by love, jealousy and greed. In the end, it is Myshkin’s very goodness that leads to disaster.

Neworld Theatre (Peter Panties, PodPlays, Ali & Ali) teams up with Vancouver Moving Theatre to bring Dostoyevsky’s feverish comedy to the stage, in a musical adaptation that is both whimsical and haunting — a moral parable that questions the principles of the powerful.

Presented by PuSh International Performing Arts Festival and Theatre at UBC.

Adapted & Directed by James Fagan Tait
Original Music by Joelysa Pankanea

Costume Designer: Mara Gottler • Set Designer: Bryan Pollock
Lighting Designer: Itai Erdal • Wardrobe Assistant: Sydney Cavanagh
Technical Director: John Reilly • Production Manager: Rachel Peake
Stage Manager: Dorothy Jenkins  • Assistant Stage Manager: Susan Miyagishima
Assistant Director: Chelsea Haberlin • Downtown Eastside Manager: Terry Hunter
Movement Consultant: Savannah Walling • Producer: Kirsty Munro 
Associate Producers: Terry Hunter, Savannah Walling

The Ensemble: David Adams, Patti Allan, Cherise Clarke, Kerry Davidson, Luke Day, Craig Erickson, Kevin MacDonald, Andrew McNee, Richard Newman, Kuei-Ming Lin, Stephen Lytton, Tom Pickett, Mike Richter, Savannah Walling, Adrienne Wong and introducing Theatre at UBC BFA-Acting students: Alen Dominguez, Alexander Keurvorst, Emma Middleton, Courtney Shields

Musicians: Joelysa Pankanea, Marimba | Mark Haney, Bass | Molly Mackinnon, Violin

Where:

Frederic Wood Theatre, UBC

When:

 

January 20 to 28 @ 7:30 pm
January 21, 22, 28, 29 @ 2:00 pm
No performance Monday, January 23

Tickets:

 

advance tickets $34 | $30 | $28
at-door tickets  $36 | $32 | $30
2-for-1 Preview January 19 @ 7:30pm
2-for-1 Matinees January 21 & 22

universitytickets.com
604-822-2678

The Idiot is commissioned by Arts Partners in Creative Development and the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival.

Read an interview with director James Fagan Tait and Composer Joelysa Pankanea.