Music for Contortionist

David E. Kemp, a former professor of drama at Queen’s University, is
the author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

Morwyn Brebner, a graduate of the playwriting program of the National
Theatre School of Canada, is playwright-in-residence at Toronto’s
Tarragon Theatre. The only speaking character in Music for
Contortionist, her first play, is Valiska Gert, a German stage, cabaret,
and film artist whose purpose is to challenge conventional notions of
beauty, order, and religion. She attacks her subject ferociously,
pausing only occasionally to indulge in self-induced hypnotic trances
designed to reveal the inner workings of a tortured mind. During these
incursions into the subconscious, Gert’s words and bizarre imaginings
are underscored by the sinuous movements of a contortionist working in
semi-obscurity behind a gauze-like scrim. The end result is a complex
portrait of a haunted and defiant survivor.