"For years Vancouver theatregoers have sung the praises of local lighting designer Itai Erdal, who always brings something especially, well, illuminating to the stages he works on. Now it’s time to change our tune and marvel instead at this man’s bravery.

Erdal steps on stage at the Chutzpah! Festival to present a fascinating examination of the terrible events leading to the death of his mother, from lung cancer, about a decade ago. Erdal struggled for years to make a documentary film about Mery and her marvellous life — and horrible death — but finally decided instead to honour her in a live production.

He’s not an actor, but being a typically loquacious Israeli lends Erdal the skills of a strong storyteller. How to Disappear Completely is a compelling memorial made all the more interesting by the way Erdal takes his technical skills and works them into the narrative.

Constructing a black box within the Wosk Auditorium at the Jewish Community Centre, he paces the enclosed space with a lighting control box in hand — here’s a white spotlight, here’s the coloured light that lends some tone, here’s the “shin-buster” every dancer dreads because it sits low in the wings, just waiting to be tripped over.

Bits of video from his library of footage filmed in Israel play out on the back wall, framed by black curtains that the artist simply shifts back and forth to reveal scenes of this person or that. As he rambles on about lighting effects and demonstrates them, Erdal is of course offering us the symbolism of a search in the darkness for the truth of what happened — not only the big, God-bothering questions (why her?) but more prosaic stuff — why can’t I get a date?

It’s a rather ramshackle 70-minute show, but look to the director and dramaturge — veteran iconoclast James Long and newcomer Anita Rochon, respectively — for the reason why How to Disappear Completely works so well. Erdal has been encouraged to play on his own unique qualities, such as a lifelong curiosity that’s carried him all over the globe, to imbue the disturbing subject of Mery’s death with a more positive energy, a life-affirming confidence that her children — and grandchildren from Itai’s sister — can carry on.

The result is warm, witty and, naturally, beautifully lit. It confirms the need for festivals such as Chutzpah! or PuSh or the Fringe, where oddities that would otherwise never see the light of day have a chance to ... shine."

"Mery Erdal is in no imminent danger of disappearing completely. It's true, she died 10 years ago, but her son Itai Erdal, known as one of the best lighting designers in the country, has immortalized her in this solo show, a mixed media theatre piece that's so personal, it feels like open heart surgery.

We learn as much about Itai Erdal as we do about his mother in How to Disappear Completely. How he went to film school in Vancouver after emigrating from Jerusalem but ended up designing lights for theatre and dance companies. How he's travelled a lot, has a lot of entertaining stories to tell and is known by his friends as a "good storyteller." He's 37, single, wants marriage and children.

But his career went on hold when, in September 2000, his mother was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Erdal flew back to Jerusalem to be with her and, aspiring documentary filmmaker that he was at the time, to record the process on film.

In the first large video image we see of Mery--and we've been eager to see her--she's wearing a bathing suit and sunglasses, and she's sitting in a lounge chair on a beach. She has a full head of hair. A literature professor, she's articulate and more than a bit scratchy, balking at the seriousness of Itai's questions. She suggests that perhaps his sister Ayana, a poet, should do the interviewing. He persists, and when Mery claims that love and death are the two things we all think about, Itai asks, "What about money?"

"Money is just a means to get love or postpone death," she replies. Her response tells us this is going to be an interesting journey.

How to Disappear Completely is the culmination of hours of video footage, hundreds of photos, dramaturgy by Anita Rochon and direction by James Long. Erdal moves into the performance area in mismatched socks, holding a small portable lighting device in his hands. It's natural that, as a lighting designer, he uses lighting as a way of describing his relationship to various people and experiences. He would, for example, illuminate his sister in Surprise Pink to soften her edges. He explains what the "shin-buster" can do, what side lighting or top lighting is good for. But his favourite is the Parcan, which, as it fades, its colour grows warmer and warmer. Now there's a metaphor to hold on to.

As a performer, Erdal appears completely at ease and totally engaging on stage. He pads around, adjusting and moving lights, letting us know there are 79 lighting cues and we are, at that point, at number 22, opening and closing curtains behind which are the video clips (with projection design by Jamie Nesbitt). The performance is so candid, so straightforward, that to call it a performance seems silly. It's Itai Erdal being Itai Erdal.

After the 70-minute show, I asked him, "How do you live through, night after night, the death of your mother?"

Produced by Chop Theatre (with development partner Rumble Productions) for the Chutzpah! Festival, this is intimate theatre that's astonishingly brave and completely entertaining. Mery was right: love and death are the things we all think about. How To Disappear Completely inspires us to live like a Parcan, shining brightly then glowing warmly as we fade to black."

“KISMET one to one hundred is hilarious, moving, and always generous.”

“In its celebration of ordinary people, KISMET one to one hundred is hilarious, it’s moving, and it’s always, always generous. The show’s charms could almost obscure the fact that it’s also tremendously sophisticated.

To research what they’re calling a theatrical documentary, company members interviewed a hundred individuals across the country, aged one to 100, asking them questions about fate and destiny. This device is a great way to get at the extraordinary within everyday life.

The interviewees become characters in the show. Mary, who’s a hundred years old, weaves a tale of personal stubbornness—and abandonment to romance. Connor, who’s 10, talks about the death of his puppy, Lily.

Director Anita Rochon and the company do a fantastic job of theatricalizing the stories. Actor Emelia Symington Fedy sometimes recounts Mary’s story from her own position as the interviewer, sometimes we hear Mary’s voice on tape, and sometimes Symington Fedy impersonates Mary with remarkable vocal accuracy.

Physically, Rochon keeps changing things up. In one of my favorite passages, actors King and Hazel Venzon sit with their backs to us as we hear the taped conversation between King and his nephew, the little guy whose puppy died. The actors simply turn their heads slightly toward one another as their characters speak. The restraint of this staging combined with the tenderness of the exchange is heartbreaking.

…this show uses common technology so well. In a scene in which Venzon and Symington Fedy are acting out driving through B.C., they suddenly see a bear; Venzon flips her laptop around and shows us video of the young beast lumbering off the highway.

The performers are all humbly, charmingly present throughout.”

“A new genre seems to be emerging and it lies somewhere between interview and theatre. Whatever you want to call it, Emelia Symington Fedy, Daryl King, Anita Rochon and Hazel Venzon nail it in this Chop Theatre production.

Together this foursome has created a unique dramatic structure for 100 cross-Canada interviews with people aged one (well, the baby's mother) to 100 (a feisty centenarian almost too busy to do the interview). The same 10 questions were posed from Haida Gwaii right across the country including, "Do you believe in kismet?" (a Turkish/Arabic/Persian word for fate or destiny).

The really compelling aspect of this piece--apart from our love of stories--is that the most profound of the questions posed are the questions we ask ourselves all our lives. "Do I believe in fate or do I believe in free will?" and "Do things happen for a reason?" Or is that just a way of dealing with disappointment?

Fedy, whose Patti Fedy persona was a Fringe favourite a few years ago, is our guide through Kismet. The vulnerability that endeared that heart-on-her-sleeve character to us in the past is still there. And she's not afraid to be afraid or to pose the big question: "How can I believe in something when things are constantly changing?"

If this is a question you ask yourself, you're destined to see this show. It's a charmer.”

“KISMET one to one hundred is profoundly engaging… and is brought to us by Vancouver’s The Chop Theatre. The four creators and performers (Anita Rochon, Emelia Symington Fedy, Daryl King and Hazel Venzon) have taken one hundred interviews, with people between the ages of one to one hundred, and turned it into 80 minutes where we get to experience what it means to be human. These stories of fate and destiny are woven together seamlessly through the use of audio, video and the clever use of a black grid and one hundred golf-sized white balls.

What I found especially intriguing is that they didn’t just interview one hundred random people but also included family and friends. They used their own personal experience, however painful, to illuminate the impact that this search for belief played in their own lives. So, while the performers do take on the voices of some of the people they interviewed, they basically perform as themselves. It was this open honesty that really made this piece so wonderful. There were no over-characterization of any of the people they interviewed rather the performers acted as a voice through which we heard the thoughts and beliefs of many.

This is a beautifully simple show and yet extremely layered.”

We’re witnessing a generation adrift. Unable to create anything original, it cobbles together barely remembered patterns from the past and the horrible sort of phony affirmation found in pop-culture popularity contests. Kudos to the “kids” who put this hour-long piece together-with their witty understanding of youth’s discomfronting place in a very confused world, the people of Townsville show a seasoned maturity.

The set of Townsville is beautifully simple. Maybe twenty evenly spaced, thick bands of elastic hang down from the ceiling. These elastics made me think of the tethers that keep an elephant under control. In a sense, Sylvia really was the elephant in the room; one that was too often ignored. Of all the narratives, the elephant is easily the most compelling and original. The death of a mascot that embodies the collective sense of identity for a community is so filled with potential that I hope Rochon and director Emelia Symington Fedy return to it.

"I am so excited-I wonder what I believe in!" says Vancouver based Emelia Symington Fedy as her alter ego Patti Fedy. Later she waxes, "I just want someone to tell me who I am so that I can be myself."

This is Fedy's one-woman clown show directed and co-written by Anita Rochon, about trying to capture a unicorn. Patti orders a kit from a local newspaper that promises to give her faith and answers all her dreams. What she receives is a membership to Unicorn Lovers Anonymous. "Finding a unicorn is going to be way easier than finding meaning. I've been looking for meaning for years, and man that bugger likes his privacy," she reasons.

For the next hour, we see Patti alternating between vulgar confidence and determined insecurity: dancing to Beyoncé, sniffing out virgins from the audience and hunting for her one-horned beast in "the darkest end of the dark, dark woods." Obviously, one can't talk about unicorns without making barely-concealed allusions to something else entirely. Hence the 'adult themes' that her publicity promises. Yes, this pig-tailed little woman with the 'Canadian Girls Kick Ass' tank top has a kinky side. There is an equally unexpected serious note to this clown show: the sadness of searching in vain, even if it's poised with a short length of rope and a bucket of corn, waiting for a mythical creature.

We are all hunting some kind of unicorn.

The show is also audience-friendly. Fedy does not shy away from crowd participation and is egged on by healthy applause. A gifted entertainer with a script that is both hilarious and thought-provoking, this is a must-see."

"Cheeky and irreverent, Patti inhabits a vaguely dysfunctional space somewhere between stand up comic and traditional clown. And she is able to take the best of both worlds. Patti has the childlike manner of the traditional clown, so she can get away with the most outrageous behavior while creating universes of fancy and fantasy, and yet fires off her lines with the timing and delivery of a well-practiced comic. Like most clowns, Patti works the audience for some of her best material, demanding that we go along with her. She asks us to "get real" with each other by telling our most embarrassing moments to the stranger sitting next to us. In her hippy phase, she invites us to "get nude" (Luckily that progresses no farther than in her mind.) But Bob Marley does show up and takes off his clothes. She tries to persuade Margaret, her best friend in the entire world, not to leave for university by having a wild night of hot sex with her sleazy boyfriend, Mervin and then phoning her the pictures. Fedy, in her red beret and outsized glasses, is an assured performer in command of herself and her audience. You can see the fine hand of John Turner (Mump and Smoot) in this show. Did I mention she plays accordion? The audience loved her.

Sometimes you see a show that flies you to Venus and back, breaks your heart and reignites your love of theatre. This is that show.

It's directed by John Turner of Mump and Smoot-with Anita Rochon. Like Mump and Smoot's terrific work of olden days, this one-woman show takes us to another dimension. A dimension of absolutely bizarre and extreme hilarity. It's performed luminescently by Emelia Symington Fedy, who seamlessly weaves off-the-cuff jems into her sweet script. Fedy is a spacey, hobbit-like presence who treats us to the most poignant stream-of-consciousness comedy you've ever been witness to in your life. You'll learn about the hairy ugly balloon knot. You'll brush Patti's hair. She sings weird songs. She might be the reincarnation of Andy Kaufman. Go.

Emelia Symington Fedy's commitment to her alter ego goes down to the tips of her bird-like fingers, creating a soft yet hysterical clown show about love, friends and being genuine.

"The only thing that sucks about seeing a show this good is that it ruins everything else."

"Edgy and Hilarious"

"Ridiculously Funny"

"Hilarious and thought provoking. This is a must see."

"Absolutely hilarious. A touching vulnerability"

"Patti will warm your heart and make you laugh hysterically at the same time."