CREATION AND PRODUCTION HISTORY
In 2009 Kevin Orr approached Andy Massingham with an idea to create a show based on the action of falling down. About a year later, they began studio work with Annie Lefebvre and improvised various and sundried methods of falling down. Formulas began to develop, character and relationships emerged. After 60 hours of falling, a vague idea for a play emerged.
In the fall of 2010 Julie Le Gal replaced Ms. Lefebrve and the show continued its development and premiered at the inaugural Undercurrents Festival at the Great Canadian Theatre Co. (Ottawa, ON) in January 2011.
Later that year a short excerpt was presented during The Magnetic North Theatre Festival’s Industry Series and Bifurcate Me was invited to the 2012 edition of the Wildside Festival at the Centaur Theatre (Montreal, QC). At the Wildside Festival, Nathaly Charrette joined Andy Massingham for the fun and ferocity of Bifurcate Me.
BIFURCATE ME
Verdun Quebec, 1972. In a laboratory of the Douglas Hospital, a scientist has hired two people to investigate why humans fall. One character speaks only English, the other only French. Over the course of the eighty - minute play the characters fall down more than 240 times. It is athletic, exhausting, beautiful and awful. They try to communicate with each other while surviving the brutality.
Directed and Created by Kevin Orr
Created and Performed by
Andy Massingham, Julie Le Gal,
Nathaly Charette and Annie Lefevbre
Designed and Technical Direction by Jon Lockhart
Stage Management by Jamie Bell & Sean Green
“…as their bodies heat up, so does their desire to communicate through wrestling techniques, acrobatics, wild aerobics and slow motion Butoh style body movements - …. Then, all fuses together as these creatures literally collapse with fatigue, as the 'voice' drives them on ...and still, no one complains"
- Alvina Ruprecht, CBC Ottawa and Capital Critics Circle
WINNER
Best New Creation
(Prix Rideau 2011)
NOMINATED
Best Direction
(Prix Rideau 2011)
"“Intensely physical, Bifurcate Me is a performance piece -- part slapstick, part absurdist comedy -- that's bracingly different from the theatre we're used to seeing… it's engaging, refreshing and surprisingly affirmative.”
- Patrick Langston, Ottawa Citizen
"This show manages to be both high concept and low brow. "
-Sterling Lynch, Ottawa Sneerzer.com