In on It

Ian C. Nelson is librarian emeritus and former Assistant Director of
Libraries (Collection Management & Budget) University of Saskatchewan
Library and Dramaturge for the Festival de la Dramaturgie des Prairies.

Daniel MacIvor is a multi-talented enfant terrible: one of Canada’s
“true creative geniuses,” founder and artistic director of da da
kamera, a writer and performer of international repute, and the
recipient of many awards here in Canada. His plays are frequently
produced by small alternative houses across the country, virtually
always receiving well justified and lively critical attention and kudos.
So it is with In On It, which he wrote, produced, directed, and acted
in.

The play is a multi-layered exercise of theatrical creation. Three
levels of storyline are shuffled rather like a set of tarot cards. The
back story is about a man in a gay relationship who is killed in a
head-on collision. Brian, his surviving partner, tries to make sense of
this “accident” by creating a play about the man who caused the
collision and the reason behind the latter’s suicide. The dead partner
returns from limbo to help in this creation and, as the play unfolds,
the two assume the roles of various characters while incidentally
commenting on the progress of the dramatic development with
consciousness of both the theatrical space and the audience. The playing
conventions in each of these “states” are not unique, but one would
be hard pressed not to use the word brilliant to describe the
juxtaposition of these elemental “states” in this tightly scripted
and minimalistically choreographed piece (only two chairs, a jacket, a
tissue, a poster, and a set of keys are required as set and props). The
text is particularly spare in the way it metes out small clues about
each character’s life. It is bound to keep an audience on its toes as
the play in progress is fine-tuned, revised, and commented on throughout
the evening. The ending is similar to the hard-hitting conclusion in
Michel Marc Bouchard’s Down Dangerous Passes Road.

Do not be surprised to find many productions of this play across Canada
in the seasons to come. It is also a text very apt to be included in the
curriculum of many a theatre course because of the multi-leveled
challenges it poses for actors.