Sargent & Victor & Me

Once again, this blog post will be for journalism class purposes.

Tuesday evening, we went to a play called Sargent & Victor & Me and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. I had very low expectations going into the play and I came out very impressed. The play was a one woman show with eight different characters that were based on real people who live/have some sort of connection to Sargent and Victor.

Debbie Patterson, the actress in the play, has MS and compared the deterioration of her body to the deterioration of the West End of Winnipeg. The set was a food bank and each character in the play interacted with the food bank some how.

I was skeptical of how Debbie Patterson was going to act as eight different characters and not be offensive. To my surprise she did a fantastic job. I think some of the characters — like the Morden's Chocolates guy and the little girl — were kind of unnecessary. I felt they didn't add much to the story and I felt no emotional connection to them and got no important information. I loved the Theresa character. The way the lighting was darker when her character starred to speak really helped her stand out from everyone else. Her story was unbelievable and I really think Debbie Patterson did a great job with that character. I loved when Gillian would tell her stories about Thunder Bay and the water falls. I felt sympathetic for her when she was speaking. I felt sad that she is unable to do those things anymore and I felt sad for her. She spoke those parts beautifully and made me really picture what she was saying.

I didn't like when newscasts were read and Debbie Patterson would go to the back of the stage area and do those strange movements. I felt like they kind of took away from what the news cast was saying because I was paying more attention to what she was doing with her movements than what the reporter was saying.

I thought it was fantastic how she could have me jaw-dropped listening to Theresa and then have me laughing about something Gillian said. I think that was impressive, and maybe it's because i've never been to a play like this, but I found that the acting was very good. Because I haven't been to a play once grade six that was about bats, I can't really compare Sargent & Victor & Me to anything. It definitely exceeded expectations and made me feel many different emotions.

This play taught me about the West End of Winnipeg definitely. I live outside the perimeter so I never go to that end of the city. This play also taught me that you can't compare a written book to theatre because if this were written it would be a completely different story. Debbie Patterson put little extra bits in because it's theatre and it needs to be entertaining, that's the bottom line. If this were a book, I think it would be putting words in people's mouths and taken in a completely different way because it would be pure journalism and no theatre. There would be less of a creative aspect with a book and with a play, your main thing is the creative aspect.

Overall I loved it. I think Debbie Patterson did a great job of telling these stories in a theatrical yet respectful way.