Champagne on Ice

Champagne: Well, what happened is that Katherine Owens, the woman who directs the piece, had the idea of, instead of having live people be the community folks, to instead have those be kind of interviews. Because they’re written that way–they’re written as though the person was talking to an interviewer. And she conceived of them as being on video. And then there’re other video elements–she’s using this doll furniture. She’s interested in the life of objects. So while the characters are living in this stark, kind of run-down setting, there’s also this fantasy of a more-elegant life that is on video. I haven’t actually seen the furniture on video, because she hadn’t had that figured out in Dallas, but the interviews look great. They’re black and white, and in a review [of the Dallas production], it said they were kind of like Richard Avedon photographs. And they function in this interesting way, because they are larger than the actual people. So it’s like the people watching this knew what was happening, but didn’t intervene, which is how things happen in small towns.

TM: And also in Greek drama.

Champagne: That’s right.

TM: How did your working relationship with Katherine begin?

Champagne: I met her a couple of years ago when I went to see [Undermain Theater’s production of] Eric Ehn’s play, his adaptation of Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury. And I really loved them–that company. They have this sort of rock ‘n’ roll take that I love. There’s a roughness to it that feels very right for the material.

TM: It’s interesting to me that in a few years you’ve gone from working on a solo piece, to a play, to a cyber opera, and, now, back to a solo piece.

Champagne: I can’t tell you how amazing it’s been, and how, in a way, crucial to me to go from one to the other. I can’t do two solos in a row anymore. I really like working one-on-one with a director, but sometimes you have a larger vision than a solo show can accommodate. Sometimes you have other kinds of stories to tell. My solos are almost more like a narrative–I write them as text–than a play. Sometimes my stories need to be told in dialogue, and those are the ones that end up being plays. And in terms of the opera, the composer came to me, and we ended up working on this together. I don’t know that I would have been ambitious enough to attempt working on an opera alone.

TM: What, if anything, links those pieces?

Champagne: I think there is a theme, and I started becoming conscious of it at a certain point. A lot of my work tends to deal with loss. I can’t figure out in terms of autobiography–I didn’t have a parent die at a young age–but there’s this longing, this loss, this sense of what’s missing, that is at the heart of all this work. Or a sense of time passing and taking things with it. And all of these pieces are about relationships. At the end of Coaticook, the young girl is very conscious of having lost this friend. So for some reason, that seems to be a theme that recurs.