By Jen Lahey
Insight Theatre is drama with a difference.
The cast members have brainstormed, researched, workshopped and written scripts. Now, they’re performing an original stage show.
The venue is different for each show, and the actors adapt to an ever-changing audience. Sometimes it will be heckling Grade 9 students, sometimes it will be sombre bureaucrats at a medical conference.
It’s more than a lot of actors are capable of, and these ones are 14-18 years old.
This is no namby-pamby stuff either. While the performance is incredibly high-energy with a light sense of mischief, the actors take tough issues such as AIDS, depression, suicide, and safer sex and explore them on stage.
The show consists of a series of sketch-style scenes, often with music incorporated. This requires the actors to do serious emotional work.
Insight drama coach Nick Di Gaetano expects the actors to be focused and in the moment when they approach the work — and the actors have responded.
Chris Bowler, who does a hysterical impression of Sean Connery in the show, says audience response has been very positive.
“We get a lot of intelligent questions from the audience,” he says, referring to the question-and-answer period after the show.
The cast fields questions about everything from the characters they play to how their parents feel about their participation in Insight.
The cast members of Insight Theatre come from six Ottawa high schools. They were chosen from a group of 19 youths who participated in the Insight Theatre summer training program.
The youths spent their summer nights in workshops run by professionals from a variety of Ottawa-area organizations, including the Rape Crisis Centre, Ottawa Aids Committee, the Hopewell Eating Disorders Support Centre and theYouth Services Bureau.
Geoff Blampied says he is “definitely better informed” about health issues after his summer training.
After being chosen, the nine members of the troupe spent two intense months putting their show together.
They clearly had a ball doing it, judging from the joyous energy, physical style and wry humour they use to approach sometimes-taboo issues in their 20 different sketches.
There’s a sketch that sees “Safer Sex Airlines” flight attendants teaching their passengers how to correctly use condoms, with Bowler playing the role of the penis.
Then there’s the circus sketch in which the different acts explain what it means to identify as straight, gay and bisexual. And the stand-out, rollicking sketch involving a boatload of bumbling HIV-positive pirates plotting to infect others.
There’s a medley of Spice Girls songs, with the lyrics changed to talk about the effects of sexually transmitted infections (the Spice Girls never had this kind of impact!). The show closes with a full-cast musical number about the importance of communication between sexual partners.
“The youths are amazing. I love this job,” says Insight co-ordinator Jill Connell at a recent performance for the Canadian Liver Foundation, where the actors received a standing ovation from some 250 health professionals.
Each youth will volunteer more than 200 hours of time educating their peers about health and social issues. Insight Theatre has been performing around Ottawa for 22 years, and is sponsored by Planned Parenthood of Ottawa.
Interested in booking a show? Connell says the new show already has a waiting list, including a request to perform in Halifax. She advises patrons to book early.
For more information, contact Connell at 226-3234 to arrange for a performance.