“Mr.Truth is the perfect comedic think-piece for the #metoo movement”
—NOW Magazine NNNN by Jordan Bimm
“a brave and saucy satire about human sexuality with the aim of outing our ‘erotic truths’ and stripping away the veneer of denial and repression.”
— Paula Citron
“as heartbreaking as it is sweet, sexy, and downright uncomfortable”
— MOONEY ON THEATRE by Trevor Abes
Read full MOONEY ON THEATRE review
“Mr Truth: I do find this erotic”
— My Gay Toronto by Drew Rowsome
“With theatre season in full bloom in Toronto, I continue to discover more local theatre companies creating challenging and provocative works. This past week I learned about Lester Trips (Theatre) founded by Lauren Gillis and Alaine Hutton. Their latest collaboration, Mr. Truth, an off-the-beaten-sketch-comedy-path is set to premiere at Why Not Theatre’s The RISER Project.
To learn more about Lester Trips (Theatre) and Mr. Truth, Gillis graciously agreed to be part of my 5 Questions With… series.”
HM: I understand that physical theatre and ambiguity play a big part in your company’s work. Can you tell us a bit about Lester Trips (Theatre)’s focus?
Lauren Gillis (LG): My collaborator Alaine and I both love two things: 1) visceral, grotesque imagery and sound, and 2) when you aren’t sure if something is supposed to be funny or not, and you’re left to teeter between comedy and tragedy.
To get that into our bodies, we train together in butoh dance, which we have been studying with choreographer Denise Fujiwara since 2011. We also study voice with Fides Krucker. She has an emotionally integrated take on extended range vocal practice with a background in bel canto. Both practices give us a way to make big, intense choices as performers while veering away from what might be considered “cartoonish”. So even in a show like Mr. Truth that uses obvious sketch comedy conventions, all that is (hopefully) still bubbling under the surface. And occasionally geysering up violently.
“Lauren is currently performing in Mr. Truth as part of the Riser Project with Why Not Theatre and Lester Trips (Theatre) at The Theatre Centre April 15 - 24.
Lauren Gillis is a performer and creator. Her major interests include ambiguity, unrecognizable dancing, an uncomfortable sense of tragi-comic teetering, and the spacetime two degrees away from explicitly erotic. As the Co-Artistic Director of Lester Trips (Theatre), her next work Mr. Truth is premiering at The Theatre Centre as part of the RISER Project, a collaborative producing model by Why Not Theatre. It’s about ridiculous erotic secrecy in people who think they’re really open about that stuff.”
photos by Helen Yung