The ‘Mouthpiece’ that roared: 5Qs with Amy Nostbakken
Theater rarely comes as simultaneously raw and virtuosic as Mouthpiece, co-created and performed by the two co-artistic directors of Toronto-based Quote Unquote Collective. Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava have fashioned an hour-long piece that combines spoken text, strenuous movements, a cappella harmony, and vocalizations to express the inner conflict that exists within one modern woman’s head, in the process encompassing an investigation of womanhood itself.
The work not only won numerous awards, including the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and Toronto Theatre Critics, it also so enamored actress Jodie Foster that she arranged for the work to be produced in Los Angeles, which then led to a book and a movie version that premiered at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival last September. Barely a week before Mouthpiece makes its Santa Barbara debut at UCSB Campbell Hall on January 23-24 on its final tour before being retired from the stage, Nostbakken delved into its development over the phone from her Ontario home.
Q. What was the genesis for Mouthpiece, and why did it take three years to write?
A. Devising a work is horrible, and extremely frustrating. You have nothing but your imagination and empty room. You want to pull out your hair and teeth. We kept hitting a wall with what we were doing, which was originally supposed to be a play about different types of female relationships. We’d rent a studio for eight hours and end up talking about our lives instead. Finally, we realized that was actually more interesting.
Then we had an “Aha!” moment, where we’d spent all this time denying that it was a feminist piece of theater, when we were actually total and utter hypocrites. We thought we were liberated, progressive, forwarding-thinking individuals, but we were just as oppressed as our mothers, a result of the patriarchy, and hadn’t come as far as we thought we head. It was, damn we have to make a play about that, confessing all of our embarrassing and private moments. Once we got there, the writing came very quickly. We just had to say out loud the things we’d never voiced before.
So did it turn out to be something more political?
No. The story is 24 hours in the life of this woman who wakes up to discover that her mother is dead, she has no voice, and she has to write and deliver a eulogy the next day. It’s simply a description of what it’s like inside a woman’s head, our heads. The inner dialog, the dissonance. Part of that is feelings of anger and frustration, but the narrative thrust isn’t overtly political. It’s simply my experience. But it’s systemic – the patriarchy is being upheld by all of us. We can’t let if fly anymore.
How did the collaborative process work?
Our training is physical theater, so most of it was done up on our feet. We began with a place where women are intimate, spending a day physicalizing what it feels like to share a bathroom with someone you know intimately. That movement piece is still in the play (via the bathtub). We’re also both musical, and I’m interested in translating the pedagogy of movement into music. So we mashed the play together in a lot of ways, with music, movement, and text and we just tried them on and refined.
You’re both playing the same woman, both her inner and outer self. And it’s autobiographical. How does that work?
It’s a blending of our own stories. We provoked each other with questions to come up with the content, things like, “Confess something you would never want anyone to know.” We’d write for 20 minutes and then read it to each other. We were shocked about how often they were exactly the same, things about what we actually think of ourselves. We figured if two people who just met have this in common, it’s probably also true for others. That led to playing one character, and anyway we needed at least two performers to describe what it’s like to be inside either of our heads.
And the white bathing suits?
We’re trying to be as vulnerable in appearance as we possibly could. And every other costume we tried felt so loaded: whether it was trousers, or a skirt, or a dress and high heels. This was vulnerable but also the most neutral. When we tried them on, we both had a feeling of being in a petri dish, like we were being examined. Uncomfortable, physically too, but appropriate.
Singin’ it at SOhO
Just two days after the Brother Brothers made their Santa Barbara club debut at SOhO following a fan-evoking debut opening for I’m With Her at the Lobero last year, the downtown nightspot hosts another set of identical twins in The Mattson 2, a jazz-rock duo that also first made its local home elsewhere, in their case the cozy retro confines of the Mercury Lounge in Goleta. Stepping up to SOhO for a second time on Thursday, January 17, guitarist Jared and drummer Jonathan bring their tribal jazz/hard-bop/rock exploration to town hot on the heels of three recent discs that show their versatility.
Friday, January 18, brings spare and succinct singer-songwriter Matthew Perryman Jones to SOhO, headlining a bill that also features fellow Atlanta-nurtured folkie Molly Parden. The club also hosts a two-day singer-songwriter showcase extravaganza on January 22-23, with Sweet Clover and Jena Douglas playing Tuesday, and former Teen Star winner Jackson Gillies sharing the stage with Victoria Vox, Tom Cole, Marcella Quirin, and the Jason Frost Trio on Wednesday.
Elsewhere, John Kay, the now Montecito-dwelling founder/lead singer-songwriter of Steppenwolf, gives new meaning to his half-century-plus old hit “Born to Be Wild” in a presentation at The Sacred Space in Summerland at 4 pm on Sunday, January 20. In “Of Elephants and Orangutans,” the rock and roll legend will speak about his lifelong fascination with pachyderms, his family’s efforts on behalf of the animals its nonprofit Maue-Kay Foundation (with wife Jutta Maue), and how the purposeful work has evolved over time. The event includes a screening of videos of interactions with the animals plus personal film clips and photos of Steppenwolf’s development and rise to stardom, and closes with a “Q&A” session.
Misdeeds and Missed Do’s on Campus
Elsewhere in theater: SBCC presented a professional production of The Game’s Afoot just this past fall on campus. This weekend, Laguna Blanca Theatre takes on Ken Ludwig’s semi-backstage comedy-mystery set in December, 1936, when real life Broadway star William Gillette, admired the world over for his leading role in the play Sherlock Holmes, has invited his fellow cast members to his Connecticut castle for a weekend of revelry but has to turn into an actual sleuth when one of the guests is murdered. Performing Arts Instructor Dana Caldwell directs the performances, slated for January 17-19 at the Spaulding Theatre.
Shrunken Heads Production Company might be UCSB’s only entirely student-run musical theater society, but that doesn’t mean you should give their next show the, ahem, brush-off. The youngsters are taking on Hair, the groundbreaking 1968 rock musical about a group of activist, long-haired hippie friends navigating the struggles of living with the draft and war in Vietnam, complete with themes of drug use, free-love, racial tensions, a once again current love/hate relationship for their own country (although they’re eschewing the famous nude scene that concludes Act 1) – along with a memorable set of songs including “Aquarius,” “Good Morning Starshine,” and “Let the Sunshine In.” Performances take place Friday-Sunday, January 18-20 at UCSB Campbell Hall. Details and tickets at www.facebook.com/events/268450520515011.
