" sexy, propulsive, bloodcurdlingly loud and deeply metaphorical"
Spektator is inspired by cockfights, sports and our long intimacy with domestic animals.
In it, brutality and fear mingle with love and tenderness.
Humans transform into chickens.
A man speaks in tongues.
An audience member will walk away with the night's winnings.
Spektator explores issues of power, ritual and transformation while considering our relationship to animals and other human beings. Performed in the round with audience seated on four sides, Spektator invites the audience into a world that is at once, theatrical and shamanistic, archaic and post-modern, funny and tragic. A multi-layered work that brings together choreography derived from the movement of birds and pugilists, text based upon sportswriting of 18th century England, and music inspired by Purcell and hillbilly Basquean bagpipes, Spektator is a wild juxtaposition of highbrow and lowbrow, court and folk, palace and barnyard.
"Bizarre as Spektator is, it begins to resonate wildly: the eroticism of violence, the complexity of human sexuality and the spectator's eagerness to participate - from outside the ring - in both"
Spektator premiered at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre October 23 - 27, 2001.
Created and directed by Lee Su-Feh and David McIntosh
Choreography: Lee Su-Feh
Text: David McIntosh
Music: Chris Grove and David McIntosh
Lighting Design: James Proudfoot
Performers: Lee Su-Feh, David McIntosh, Susan Elliott, Billy Marchenski, Jen Murray, Ron Stewart, Chris Grove and Louis Churillo
Running time: approximately 1.5 hours including a 20 minute intermission.
Number of performers on tour: 8
"Spektator's obvious sources are cockfights and the boxing ring but the work moves far beyond those arenas into spheres of power: who has it, who wants it, how to get it."
"Spektator is muscular, primal, brutal and weirdly hilarious"
-Jo Ledingham, The Vancouver Courier