Michel Tremblay at Ralph Connor House

It is a frosty January night in Winnipeg. People are scattered throughout the foyer, parlour and dining room of Ralph Connor House, sipping drinks and commenting on the architecture and the artefacts on display. The event underway may appear to be a cocktail reception, but it is not. Although spectators may not be aware of the fact, Avera Theatre’s1 Stories for Late Night Drinkers has begun. The performance can best be described as a theatrical collage, in which spectators are moved from room to room in a kind of Boulevard-style progression and which uses a collection of short stories as its point of departure. As such, it needs a setting and a structure that immediately alter the expectations of the spectator. From the moment that spectators walked through the front door, the undeniable character of the twenty-three-room, 11,0000-square-foot Jacobean Revival house, placed a focus on the space as a principal element of production. Spectators were also immediately made aware of the fact that they had entered space with a history, representative of another time, with a different reality. They were encouraged to explore the ground- and lower levels of the house prior to the start of the performance but not the upper floors. The conspicuous lack of formal markers to suggest the boundaries of the performance space, such as a raised stage area or theatrical lighting, further altered performance expectations. Spectators were thus offered the suggestion of possible boundaries rather than given a clear indication of actual boundaries. The staircase to the second floor remained unlit until characters descended to the ground floor to wander among the gathering spectators. This action served as a transition to the official opening of the performance and as a means to establish conventions that would be used throughout the performance: staircases as one of the signs indicating a shifting reality, the dissolution of physical boundaries between actors and spectators and the notion that actors would react to spectators without inviting interaction. Ralph Connor House thus set the context of the performance and provided the concrete framework for the spectator’s journey.