"In Sundry Language": An Analysis of Identity and Multimedia Space
In Sundry Languages utilizes scenes familiar to everyday cosmopolitan life, multimedia technology, and multiple languages to build a show that accurately represents politically and culturally cosmopolitan Toronto (Bennet, Woodward 16), with a focus on perspective and identity.
Art Babayants explores identity and language with strategic openness, as defined by Bennet and Woodward (17). Bennet and Woodward suggest openness to be used as a tool by actors to "mobilize particular ways of seeing" in socialization (Bennet 17), which Babayants achieved with a camera. We were alienated in a way Western media alienates minorities in our curated mass media as we were denied English subtitles, and our perception of culturally diverse people was questioned in our choice between mediated and live space (Kaye 129). Often, I chose the mediated space, and the class were also drawn toward it. The question of mediation, our perception, and whether it lies on the real person or filtered perceptions of them was questioned implicitly. In our multimedia society, wherein we see more diverse bodies, it is important to question how images are mediated by media, and the show did not critique who imposes mediation. It did bring into question perception, however, and suggested that cosmopolitan space includes our media, as our interactions are often via screen.
A "cosmoscape", defined by Bennet, Woodward, and Skrbis as “structuring space that encourages cosmopolitan socialization” (2009), exists in everyday Toronto at Tim Hortons. Tim Hortons is a perfect combination of our mediated view of Canada, as it is a Canadian cliché in its snowy, hockey-themed ads and on mainstream television, but Babayants’ conflicting, multi-lingual, confusion-charged scene depicted the reality that we are multicultural, multilingual, and just as rude in customer service as anybody else.
Art Babayants in conversation with us spoke about Alexandra Park as being a more diverse space than the Fringe, and both Theatre Passe Muraille and The Laboratory Theatre focus upon diversity in their mandates (About) (What is TLT?). They achieved this diversity, questioned our views and the view imposed on racialized people broadly with their television screen, and encouraged an openness in perception through our forced language separation and mediated shift in perception. They explored their own identities through monologue, and the identity of the "local within the context of rapid social change" (Bennet, Woodward 18) that should prevail in a festival according to Bennet and Woodward (18), thus making it a success in the context of Toronto Fringe.
Works Cited
“About.” Theatre Passe Muraille. Web. Passemuraille.ca/about-contact.
Babayants, Art. Conversation. September 9, 2017.
Bennet, Woodward. The Festivalization of Culture. “Chapter 1: Festival Spaces, Identity, Experience, and Belonging”. Farnham, Surrey; 2014. 11-15.
In Sundry Language. By Babayants, Art, & Cast Collective, directed by Art Babayants, 9 July, 2017, Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto, ON. Performance.
Kaye, Nick. Performance as Research. –Scholarly Acts and Creative Cartographies. “Disjunction: Performing Media Space”. Palgrave Macmillian, 2009. 128-130.
“What is TLT?” Toronto Laboratory. 2012. Web. Torontolab.org/whats-tlt.
