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March 2, 2012
One-man show sees revival
Itai Erdal loves storytelling, in no matter what form it takes.
OLGA LIVSHIN
Being courageous is a personal choice, and Itai Erdal clearly demonstrated his artistic courage last year, when he first presented his one-man autobiographical show, How to Disappear Completely, to the Vancouver public. An enhanced version of the play will once again be a part of the city’s theatrical highlights, as a special event at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts, March 7-10.
The show is Erdal’s first foray into performing. Before last year, he didn’t consider himself an actor, and neither did anyone else, for that matter. The theatrical community knows him as one of Vancouver’s best theatre lighting designers. His creative input is valued so much that he is usually booked a year or two in advance. His work in lighting design has taken him around the world – Canada, the United States, England, Germany and Israel – and, in recent years, he has received several awards for it.
“I became a lighting designer almost by accident,” Erdal recalled in an interview with the Jewish Independent. “When I was 15, I did some lighting as a technician for a public theatre festival in Jerusalem. I liked it very much.” In fact, he liked it so much that he returned to the theatre to work as a lighting technician after serving in the Israeli military.
In 1999, Erdal immigrated to Canada and enrolled in the Vancouver Film School to become a documentary filmmaker. Afterwards, he was involved in the local film industry for awhile, but theatre beckoned him back.
“I wanted to be a lighting technician in a theatre again but couldn’t find work,” he shared. “Then someone cancelled at Studio 58, and they started looking for a lighting designer. They needed one in a hurry.”
Erdal grabbed the chance. “It was in 2002,” he explained, “my first gig as a lighting designer. And I realized I was good at it. I never went to school to study lighting design but I saw good designers working and I learned from them.”
That first contract, with Langara College’s Studio 58, led to more than 150 others, in Canada and abroad.
Over the last decade, while he designed lighting for multiple plays and ballets, Erdal’s personal project, the one that eventually developed into How to Disappear Completely, grew quietly but consistently in his mind. By 2011, the show was born. It premièred at that year’s Chutzpah! The Lisa Nemetz Showcase of Jewish Performing Arts.
The multimedia show, combining film and monologue, draws its roots from a personal tragedy. In 2000, Erdal received a phone call from Israel: his mother was dying from lung cancer. He hopped on a plane and flew back to Israel to be with her. He also decided to film her last months: he wanted to create a documentary.
Erdal explained his decision: “I wanted to hang on to her as long as I could. I’ve always been very close to my mother and I wanted to have something left when she is gone. I tried to be creative in the hardest moments of my life, wanted to make something positive out of [something] extremely negative. Mom encouraged my filming. We laughed a lot, and you can see it in the show. It’s a tragedy turned to joyful memories.”
For various reasons, his first idea, the documentary, never materialized, but the show he created instead became a tribute to his mother. Though originating from a very personal place, it resonated strongly with audiences.
“It was the most amazing, most rewarding experience of my life,” Erdal said of the Chutzpah experience. “People lined up to talk to me after the show. I received a bunch of e-mails. So many told me about losing their loved ones: parents, husbands, wives. My show touched them, helped them deal with their grief.”
When he decided to offer his play to the public, his main concern was for the members of his family who formed part of the show: his sister and his mother’s husband. “I filmed it 10 years before, and they said many things that were very private. I was worried how they would react. I didn’t want to offend the people I love. But I needn’t have worried. They came for the opening night, flew in from Israel, and they loved the show.”
Erdal admitted to deriving deep satisfaction from performing and said he looks forward to repeating the experience. He doesn’t think a switch from being behind the spotlight to being in front of it makes that much of a difference.
“It’s all about storytelling,” he said. “A lighting designer helps the director to tell a story. An actor also tells a story, and I’ve always been a good storyteller.
“I enjoyed performing in this show,” he continued. “Although I was anxious at first, performing came easy to me. I was swimming with the material: I wrote it, after all. And I feel comfortable on stage. A few times before, I participated in the storytelling event, the Flame. It’s a grassroots series of live storytelling at the Cottage Bistro on Main Street.”
Pleased with the way in which How to Disappear Completely turned out, Erdal said he plans to create more shows in the future: as a producer, writer and actor. He recently started his own theatre production company, called the Elbow. His first production is going to be a two-man show about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Erdal has never shied away from controversy and, apparently, he is not going to start now.
Olga Livshin is a Vancouver freelance writer. She can be reached at [email protected].
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