The documenting of cultural events is a strong component of the Tunison body of work.
Ian Smith presents the distasteful subject of cannibalism in a delightful series of comedies. Thoughts are wrenched out of the audience as he challenges them to empathize with the cannibals. In the end the average Christian is checking his values against the sacrament of communion while Smith's outrageous performance is spinning with ritual and fact.
A circus in the junkyard complete with Lobster Girl, fireworks, accordion rock n' roll, fanfares and effigy burnings takes place at dusk. There was standing room only.
Dark Isle is a one act play, set on the East Coast of Scotland, which follows the life of a young woman and her family just prior to her decision to leave her home and emigrate to Canada. When a woman grows out of her environment, hearts are broken and lives are deformed. This sensitive, coming of age story juxtaposes the aspirations of the young against the misery of a shattered relationship. The play combines language, movement, and music to create a world more primal and poetic than realistic, in which the four characters each deal with loss and courage. Distance - physical, emotional, and sexual - is the driving force behind the play. Dark Isle is an examination of home: what it is and how we choose to leave or remain there. Blame it on the land. 1999
Fat Girls is an analysis of the fear of fatness, the tyranny of self-image, and the viciousness of sibling rivalry with a macabre, irreverent funny style. Mom is dying of cancer and ecstatic about it: she's a size seven at last and finally has collarbones. Bettina eats non-stop and is exceptionally free with her black garbed and plump body until slim and perfect sister Lisa arrives home to shape everyone up. And then there's the insidious, brutal presence of the Mirror out to tyrannize everyone according to her own fears and weaknesses. 1991
After their plane crashes, Phyllis and her son Bishop are stranded on a desert island for 5 years. Meanwhile Howard, Phyllis' husband and famous movie director, continues his life with his somewhat loopy mistress Pam. Using the "minefield" of the family as his context Nicky Silver, one of contemporary theatre's leading playwrights from New York, explores human nature in relationship. He strips societal rules, conditioning and roles to reveal our still primal and often barbaric nature in shocking light. Fat Men is an absurd comedy revealing our hope for healing our relationships within each other and ourselves. 1997.
A Fertile Imagination is a comic-serious play that provides "a keyhole view of reality", and which inspires its audience to feel. A Western Canadian premiere, it is about two women who want to have a baby together using artificial insemination. The production was intrigued with the subject of what makes a family, who has the right to a family, and the exploration of the changing family structure. 1993.
Frozen is a solo written and conceived by Michele Sereda, that is a discussion of a lady living in a roadside ditch negotiating her next destination. It follows the journey of a frozen woman who tries to maintain her connection to her core, and a patch of land, while the environment interferes with her permanency. Frozen is an examination of land, roots, identity, and community and poses the question of who owns land. A poetic world of isolation, barrenness, and stillness is revealed through the use of text, movement, and sound. Neil Cadger (theatre/dance artist) says, "Frozen Lady was a refreshing taste of the art of the theatre. I found myself in a complicity with Michele as she recounted the fragmented and hallucinatory thoughts of a woman freezing to death; ideas flickering like the last sparks of the last synapses in a woman's life. Cold but sterile."
The techniques of time lapse photography are used to show the melting of a frozen heart. Time is compressed at a ratio of about 40:1.
What are our actual dimensional coordinates in the cosmology? Vancouver Island must be relevant. Consider the technological improvements that are cast upon the human race. Storage vessels for energy must be as relevant as information silos. Do the clothes make the man?
A fascinating installation at Neutral Ground about the human heart and the concepts of it frozen or melting.
What if aliens landed in Saskatchewan at the farm down the road. How would your mother take it? What about your sister? By the way, are there any aliens down the road?
The March 14, 1990 performance of this classic of World Peace shows us and the inner city crowd that despite our differences people are basically the same. Directed by Miss Thompson and Mrs. Edwards.
The Look was a project commissioned by the Regina International Children's Festival and then moved into a southern Saskatchewan school tour. The Look is a teen show probing the realities behind the myths of beauty, image, and the fashion industry and how these myths affect our society and youth.
The shaping of female flesh, the economic exploitation of her smell, the brainwashing of her mind with fashion propaganda are all explored in this bizarre dramatic essay. Costain's pained ballet of the fashion model is hilarious, Sereda's tear jerking recounts of liposuction made everyone squirm and flinch their bottom. Feminist analysis of the modern women's weakness makes thought provoking teen comedy. 1994.
Curtain Razors, in collaboration with the MacKenzie Art Gallery, are pleased to present a new performance inspired by poet David Solway's book length poem, The Lover's Progress, to take place November 21, 22 and 23, 2002.
Drawing from William Hogarth's eighteenth century engravings of A Rake's Progress series and Solway's collection of poems, that are similar in fashion to Hogarth's eight plates, Michele Sereda, artistic director of Curtain Razors, has created a performance which captures the critical moments in the lover's career. Staged in the MacKenzie Art Gallery Salon, we meet the female counterpoint to Solway's lover caught in a web of confusion, trying to move forward from the last island of desire. With text, song, movement and through another voice; Sereda's lover tells her story. The performance is created and staged by Michele Sereda featuring the voice of Gary Farmer, and sound design by Don Stein.
Through various images prevalent throughout the ages, ranging from the wart-ridden witch in Hansel and Gretel to Medusa with her hair of live snakes, the image of the Mad Woman was juxtaposed into various guises and forms of madness. This 1996 work investigated the need within people and society to acknowledge and free the creative energy of the Mad Woman.
This September 1990 installation has accented for the documenter many of the Artificial Intelligence issues. The filter and encode/decode errors and storage inaccuracies are demonstrated by powerful human examples drawn from a distant maritime past.
Five year old actors attempt musical feats as the senior students direct their juniors in a short musical of Chicken Soup. Directed by Miss Ortmann.
A thousand years ago, the world was coming to an end. The disasters never really materialized. So history could repeat itself, doom and gloom was predicted for January 1, 2000. The computers were to crash because the year 1999 represented by 99 would be less than 2000 represented by 00. Like the medieval experience it didn't happen, except for those computers which Trevor Corridon threw off the Knox Metropolitan United Church bell tower. Seven computers crashed as the bells sounded changes.
True West is a very masculine work about a violent brother relationship, man's relationship to the land, and the relationship of the son to the family. (The piece has strong undertones of the prey/predator relationship.) By cross-casting a violent brother relationship as two sisters the nature of this production became a vehicle to explore society's views of women. It toyed with creating a willful, aggressive, raw, passionate, and volatile female mythology. 1992.
Ma and Pa Ubu, wife and husband are planning to assassinate the King of Poland. They scheme, argue, fight, manipulate, divide, kill and sometimes love in order to conquer Poland for their own personal greed and strangely their gluttony. The production of Ubu Roi, at Regina's MacKenzie Art Gallery was to take an international classic and place it in a modern context to illuminate the world of impermanence and transience. Ubu was being updated from the late nineteenth century to the current world of thirty-second sound bits. The "world" was attained by scrambling the order of the script and allowing visual image and movement to propel action as opposed to psychological character motivation. A collective of provincial artists in non-specific racial roles and non-specific gender roles formed the company. 1998
Waiting For Godot was an exploration into humankind's dilemma of the meaning of life. This production discussed modern society's pressing concerns of the over-educated, the underworked, the so-called generation X, the need to reach into past decades to inform and guide the present, and the world-wide uncertainty caused by the crumbling of long-standing political, economic, and social structures. Waiting For Godot was presented in a warehouse space. When a performance makes you scratch you know that something has got under your skin. The girls challenge the patience of the most devout. 1995.
| Location: Scarth Street Mall, Regina, SK | Costume: Formal | Time: After Dark |
| Fire: Yes | Anecdotes: 3 | Chainsaw: Yes |
| Narrative: Fractured | Music: Improvised Rock n' Roll |
This performance opens with a scriptorium of graffiti where the scribes work in two directions and hang up their white coats when finished. A cabaret follows including body painting, sign hammer and coffee table bondage.
Updated By Wilson Harron, Andrew Shih And William Brown. July 13, 2000
Page Last Updated: May 18, 2003