SPIN Bridges Music, Wordplay & History @ Undercurrents Theatre Festival
Photo by Jeremy Mimnagh
The debut performance of SPIN, a four-year-old musical production by Evalyn Parry, will be showcased four nights at the Undercurrents Theatre Festival starting tonight.
It’s part personal story by singer-songwriter Parry, part historical investigation into the symbolism of the bicycle, and part demonstration of the bike as a musical instrument. Brad Hart, a percussionist, will play the same red CCM Galaxie bike that launched the show and that hasn’t been ridden since its transformation into an instrument.
Hart’s bike setup is slim: loop and reverb pedals connected to the contact mics all over it. The vibrations from the solid surfaces of the fender, the tuned spokes, the frame and the seat all get reshaped as he likes. The old seat becomes a kind of bass drum. This alteration of the bike characterizes the play’s modus operandi — the transformative power of the cycle.
“When I set out to create the show, I had a couple of intentions,” said Parry. “One was to bring my two art forms together: music and theatre. The bike became the theme. SPIN investigates all the metaphors surrounding the bicycle and its purpose a revolutionary symbol.”
Through original songs and projections of historical imagery, Parry connects her own story to that of the women’s rights movement of the late 19th century. Her original idea was sparked by a quote from women’s rights pioneer Susan B. Anthony, who said: “‘I believe the bicycle has done more to emancipate women than anything else in history.” What Parry found in an extensive year of research was a lot of evidence supporting the bike as a symbol for feminism.
“I do think the bike is still a powerful symbol,” she said. “Not in the same way for feminism, more for the environmental movement, but also for freedom. It’s a piece of equipment that gets your from A to B without having to rely on anyone else. It’s physical empowerment and being in charge of your own destiny.”
On the second day of her research she discovered the story of Annie Londonderry.
In 1894, Latvian-born Annie Kopchovsky began her bike trip around the world that started in Boston. She sold ad space on her clothing and her bike to fund her travels, and became sponsored by a water bottle company called Londonderry. Keep in mind this was in the 19th century. Taking their brand name as a surname, she would speak on the benefits of their lithium-infused H2O and managed to complete her tour in 15 months. She finished her trip as “a new woman” about which she wrote, “if that term means that I believe I can do anything that any man can do.”
Parry’s love of wordplay also fueled the themes of SPIN. The vocabulary of bicycle parts are allegorical to aspects of life, the historical elements harp on the contemporary, and the title itself refers not only to the turning wheel but to the way storytellers transmit tales and to the way marketers interpret data to make some salable.
SPIN‘s inaugural show took place March 2011 at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto. It toured in southern Ontario, the coast of BC and the Northwest Territories for a ten-day stint. The right opportunity never presented itself to come to the nation’s capital until Patrick Gauthier, Undercurrents Festival Director, approached Parry for this year’s fifth anniversary of the fest. Parry has ambitions to bring the show to European bike capitals like Copenhagen and Amsterdam.
It will play in the Arts Court Theatre Wednesday Feb. 18 at 7 p.m., Thursday Feb. 19 at 9 p.m., Friday Feb. 20 at 7 p.m., and Saturday Feb. 21 at 9 p.m. Check out the trailer below.