The main character in Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg’s latest dance-theatre piece, Porno Death Cult, is more like her than anyone she’s played before.
“Maureen is a woman in her late 30s, early 40s looking for faith, looking for the answer, the way to be,” Friedenberg said.
Forty-one-year-old Friedenberg is confident Maureen occupies a similar space to others her age.
“You’ve walked around the corner in life and now you can kind of see the end coming and so these things start to come up a lot more,” Friedenberg said. “Maureen is trying to find salvation… She’s tried the Buddhism and the yoga and the revival and she just can’t feel the spirit.”
Other searchers can see Maureen’s struggles in the world premiere of Porno Death Cult at the Firehall Arts Centre, March 5 to 8.
In addition to Maureen, Friedenberg, who’s known for her physical, character-driven performances, embodies a Southern Baptist-style preacher and a “ridiculous” Vancouver-style yoga guru in the solo show.
“Which really speaks to how does religion manifest right now in Vancouver,” she said. “What’s the church people go to?”
Friedenberg’s yearning to explore faith and faithlessness grew from walking the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage route through Southern France and Spain alongside her husband and Porno Death Cult’s composer, Marc Stewart, in 2010.
Walking six to eight hours a day for 34 days was much more demanding than Friedenberg expected. The experience gave her new respect for the human spirit and fired up her curiosity about faith.
“I was raised in an atheist-Jewish household so it’s all news to me in a way,” she said. “I was just really interested in the journeys people go on and the journey I went on… I came back wanting to ask everybody — and we’re told you don’t talk about religion.”
But inquire she did and Friedenberg says the beautiful, funny and horrible stories she heard fed her latest creation.
With so many Vancouverites treating yoga, cross training and juice cleanses as their pseudo salvation, Friedenberg decided to poke at yoga in her show, too.
“I wonder how many people are actually [using yoga as a path to self-acceptance],” the longtime yoga instructor said. “Because you see people, they’re running to yoga, they’re panicked, they’ve got their outfit on. I’ve taught for years, you see women checking their makeup before they go into yoga class, covertly texting during class and you wonder. You wonder, are you guys really doing this?”
The title of Friedenberg’s newest darkly comic production wasn’t inspired by limber bodies twisting in figure-skimming clothes but by the images of Jesus she observed in cathedrals along the Camino.
“I found that the big statues of Jesus got better and better looking,” she said, acknowledging that this sounds sacrilegious. “It’s like, that one’s pretty hot, getting a little more muscular and he’s wearing hardly anything, right. And I’m looking around and it’s mostly women in these cathedrals and churches and also it got bloodier and bloodier.
“I was like, whoa, this is a bit of a porno death cult,” Friedenberg continued. “I wanted to work with it and work against the title.”
Friedenberg is keen to work with the other artists, including director Marcus Youssef of Neworld Theatre, who have brought her meditation on faith to life. She says Stewart’s music steps in almost as another character and lighting designer James Proudfoot has recreated the streams of light that illuminate churches. Visual artist Mickey Meads has created a life-sized altar-like sculpture for Frienberg’s set, which is a departure for the performer and creator of the award-winning and touring productions bANGER: The Power Hour and Nick and Juanita: Livin’ in my Dreams, who typically animates a bare stage. And Meads and costume designer Alice Mansell have fashioned a mixed-media installation that transforms the Firehall’s lobby into a temple, echoes Friedenberg’s characters and leads visitors into the show.
When audience members leave, Friedenberg expects them carry a sense of appreciation for what others cope with, their searches and loneliness. “And an appreciation for the faith and the faithlessness and that that’s part of everybody’s experience,” she added
For details, see firehallartscentre.ca.
