Don't think, just watch

One can be forgiven for leaving Studio Theatre’s latest experimental production feeling acutely disconnected and asking what you’ve just witnessed.

Nothing can really prepare you for The Gertrude Stein Project now running until Saturday, April 9 at the Timms Centre. But it certainly mirrors the flamboyant life of 20th century modernist icon Gertrude Stein, a literary genius who reinvented “landscapes of language,” mirroring the simplicity of Matisse and Picasso.

A muse to numerous artists, her own landscapes of language were often tedious puzzles that relied more on cerebral philosophy than the dramatist’s traditional take of conveying the human experience. Although considered a literary giant, her prose is seldom read and even more rarely produced for the stage.

Director Beau Coleman gives this 75-minute production a “cubist” treatment of Stein and her companion, Alice B. Toklas’, journey through life. Collectively with the University of Alberta’s 12 graduating bachelor of fine arts drama students, Coleman has assembled passages from Stein’s texts into a fragmented, out-of-sequence kaleidoscope.

A chaotic multimedia pastiche of wordiness, deep philosophical musings, rhythmic poetry and a chorus of movement and sound, they eventually coalesce to form an ever-changing theatrical painting of the writer’s words.

We might have no clear idea of what we’ve seen, but the visual experience is beautifully crafted. For instance, actors at times speak in tongue-twisting, repetitive words while in non-stop motion. The total effect is puzzling and sometimes amusing. Think Dr. Seuss for adults.

The disjointed flashes are tied together by The White Core, a group of six dancers — minions that move in and out of Stein’s life carrying out her dominatrix bidding. Also pulling the work together are several vignettes from Yale University professor Leon Katz (Jamie Cavanagh) and interviews with a wizened Toklas (Nicola Elbro) after Stein’s death.

Bent with age and slow in movement, Elbro’s chain-smoking Alice still has a sharp mind and curious personality that woos the audience. Through her eyes, we see glimpses of how Toklas submerged her personality to the whims of the mercurial Stein (Peter Fernandes). And yet the two women’s private intellectual-emotional attraction thrived, a 40-year dance filled with tenderness and pain, tranquility and volatility.

Costumer Karen Swiderski has dressed the cast in period costume with the exception of the White Core, a white-trousered modernist sextet. And the background set is a white palette of screens with vividly dressed characters skittering across the stage much like words on a page.

This is a work that is difficult to stage and trying to follow a linear narrative is a recipe for aggravation. Just let it wash over you and have one of Toklas’ hash brownies.