House Humans

Ian C. Nelson is Assistant Director of Libraries, University of
Saskatchewan; and Director, Saskatoon Gateway Plays, Regina Summer
Stage, and La Troupe du Jour.

The plays of Daniel MacIvor are frustratingly uneven. This multitalented
actor, director, producer, writer, and artistic director (of Toronto’s
Da Da Kamera) has had no fewer than five nominations for the Chalmers
Canadian Play Award. Among them was the brilliant and disturbing See Bob
Run, a one-woman show that seems to find a new performer every time you
look around, not only in Canada, but abroad as well.

The first piece in this volume, House, in fact won the 1991 Chalmers
Award. A number of separate pieces have been put together to form a
series of confessions and observations emanating from the mouth of
Victor, the solo performer. The train of thought seems largely to be a
product of idea association stimulated by the character’s group
therapy. At the same time, the character calls attention to the fact
that he is conscious of being in a theatre—hence, the title House.

MacIvor himself performed the part of Victor in essentially this form
at Factory Theatre Studio Café and in the Mainspace of Theatre Passe
Muraille in 1992. Robert Wallace was apparently so impressed by this
performance that he wrote an articulate introduction of analysis, which
rather overstates the uniqueness of the device of rupturing the
narrative or theatrical illusion to make the audience a responsible part
of the interpretive performance. He is, however, quite correct in
stating that both pieces in this volume “deny [ . . . ] the
conventions of narrative categories,” and that they will appeal to a
“reader who relishes performance of textual play.”

On the surface, the award-winning House, with its obvious construct of
a character in treatment, appears to be more prepared for the stage. The
observations and stories in the second piece, Humans, are more
self-contained (or detachable) and satisfying. In these poиmes en
prose, MacIvor is able to fine-tune an astute linguistic prowess already
put into the mouth of the startling and often seriously comic Victor.
Both pieces seem destined for Fringe Festival performances and audition
pieces.