The fifth annual St. John’s Short Plays Festival is underway in the capital city, bringing programming to YouTube as well as a special live event earlier this week.
With social distancing protocols in mind, three plays were presented to an audience at the Reid Theatre at Memorial University — more specifically, on the theatre’s exterior wall.
Attendees showed up to the drive-in double feature both in vehicles and on foot, toting lawn chairs and snuggling up in blankets.
The trio of shows kicked off with “The Brass Button Man,” advertised to me by a friend who described the show as “basically a shadow puppet show where everything is live performed and hand made.”
I was sold on my pal’s review of the show from a previous year — “Music, voice acting, trippy ass scenery and Newfoundland lore. Un-f--king-real.”
Written by Dylan Farrell, Louise Gauthier, Darren Ivany, David Lane, Baptiste Neis, Jamie Skidmore and Michael Smith, and directed by Jamie Skidmore, “The Brass Button Man” tells the spooky story of a fisherman, his bride and their “bun in the oven.”
When the fisherman goes off to sea and fails to return, his wife and son hold out hope for his safe return, with his uniform’s brass buttons serving not only as a keepsake, but a unique identifier should the fisherman — or his body — ever be found.
Though a dark story, there was much humour peppered throughout, like a joke about a fisherman falling overboard and yelling, “as in tradition, I can’t swim!”
Another favourite was about watching “NetFix” — “when you fixes da nets, and I watches ya.”
Throughout the story, townsfolk have various encounters with the Brass Button Man, a skeletal figure seeking brass buttons with a hint of vengeance, all in a wonderfully thick traditional Newfoundland accent.
Next on the docket was “The Kraken,” another shadow puppet play. This show was performed live, with EunJung Cho, Kimberley Drake, Lucas Ings-Simms, Darren Ivany, Sheldon Downey and Michael Smith moving quickly and efficiently to present the many scenes of the play with 3D-printed puppets while also combatting the wind.
This tale dates back to “before my nan, before your nan, and your nan’s nan,” way back to shortly after the arrival of Leif Erikson.
Legend has it that Erikson was followed to North America by a large aquatic beast — a kraken.
It’s but a legend to one fisherman, just a scary story about an “oversized calamari” meant to spook children, but his Icelandic scientist wife dismisses his skepticism and tells their precocious daughter Beverly Rosemary Rose about the monster potentially lurking in the deep.
As times get tougher for the Pickled Capelin Cove family, the fisherman is forced to strike a deal with “a rich old white man,” Richard Whiteman, who assigns him the seemingly impossible task of killing the kraken.
Without spoiling the plotline, the fisherman embarks on an aquatic adventure, with his smart young daughter also joining in the battle against the brackish beast below.
The drive-In feature evening finished off with “Itself: The Only Thing To Fear,” a much more contemporary piece. Marc Warren did his usual fantastic job of directing a young cast in a more “artsy” performance. Though the audio and lighting could have been higher, the mysterious show still captivated audiences, leading many of us to an “a-ha” moment as the credits rolled.
The St. John’s Shorts Plays Festival continues throughout the weekend, concluding Sunday, having presented nearly 20 unique shows over the course of just four days.
For more information and full festival schedule, visit http://www.shortplaystjohns.ca.
