bANGER: interview with Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg

_On Saturday, June 7th, 2008 at the Phoscao Café, Plank Collective Member Maryse K. Zeidler met with Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, creator and performer of *bANGER*, a satellite performance at this year’s Magnetic North Theatre Festival in Vancouver._

_*bANGER* is a one hour, one-woman dance/theatre piece in which Friedenberg plays a teenage male named Ivan, a heavy metal fan. Friedenberg is known for her character-driven solos that blend her training in both dance and theatre. The piece has been performed in Calgary, Vancouver, Victoria and St. John, and is slated to tour internationally to London, England this July._

MKZ: So… Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg: 30-something year old woman, Ivan: Teenage Metalhead. What made you go in that direction?

TCF: Well, I did listen to a lot of heavy metal in high school, and I hung out with the heavy metal boys. We all joined the Young Marxists of Canada together and listened to Metallica, and smoked in the pit.

I just go into the studio and improvise, and the character and physicality of this teenage boy kept coming up, and I thought, “that’s ridiculous… I can’t really do that.” I hadn’t yet let myself go into that because it’s such a departure, theoretically, from who I am. However, it is part of who I am. Definitely.

I feel like everybody’s populated by a whole bunch of personalities and we bring out certain ones at times. As a woman, when you’re in a situation where you’re with a bunch of guys your masculine side would probably come forward a little bit more, and when you’re hanging out with a bunch of women, the feminine side of your personality would come out. As a performing artist I bring the personalities out a little bit more than the average person would.

As soon as I started showing Ivan to my director, Sophie Yendole, she was really gravitating towards the material as well. We watched Some Kind of Monster, the Metallica documentary, and Sam Dunn’s documentary Metal: a Headbanger’s Journey. I just felt like heavy metal’s this really popular fringe of outsiders… huge mobs of outsiders, which is attractive. We all feel like we’re a weirdo, so I’ve totally considered Ivan part of who I am.

MZ: What kind of research did you do to embody the physicality of a 13 year old boy?

TCF: Well, I’m an observer: I stare at people, I watch people walk, and I watch their gestures. I’m a bit of a sponge that way. I’ve always been like that - when I was a kid I would really enjoy imitating people, which was really irritating for my parents…

I found that when I started experimenting with the physicality of the character it came naturally to me. So naturally it was kind of freaky – the loping walk, the twitchy head, the flipping of hair, all that stuff. It was very enjoyable.

So that’s how I develop it, just a lot of observation and experimenting with it in my own body. And going to lots of heavy metal concerts, which is definitely a fringe benefit…

MKZ: How do you avoid creating a caricature when you’re developing a character?

TCF: With most of my characters I start out with a cartoon of the character - really exaggerated, but the more I play in it, the more it feels real. And becomes real.

I spend a lot of time with the characters, by going into character and being with them, and making sure that they have all that depth of feeling and I’m not just lampooning. It’s real for the characters - they’re not just jerks, or just angry, or stupid. They have a whole range of emotions.

Sophie and I worked really intensely on the whole story of the character, like how old he is, what happened, what’s his relationship with his teachers at school, what’s his family relationship… Getting all that information so that when I go into character, he can speak through me and tell me what’s going on. I try to be really sensitive and I do end up falling in love with the characters and feel like they’re my children - I feel protective of them. I think it’s really important because it’s all about understanding each other. The comedy and the caricature are a doorway and you can go in it and see all the other layers. This kid is a total heavy metal kid - he’s got anger, but he’s also really smart, and articulate, and he’s got feelings - he’s got crushes on girls, he loves his mom, even though she’s irritating, and he’s really interested in his world.

MKZ: Towards the end of the piece you go into a segment about Ivan’s dream world. Can you tell me more about that section, what made you put it in?

TCF: It’s very open. I don’t like to tell people what to see. The character we call Nigel is an old soldier. He’s a vet from North Africa. He might be a figment of Ivan’s imagination, he might be Ivan’s grandfather, he might be just somebody out of a book that Ivan is into. It’s a parallel story because he’s this old guy who’s been through the war and he’s kind of mental, and he’s shell shocked. He might be a drunk. We also go a little into his story as a soldier and what that experience is.

You know how kids get this encyclopedic knowledge of something that they’re into? Ivan is totally into the war in North Africa. The war in North Africa is interesting because it’s forgotten and we don’t think about it. We think about Poland and the blitz, but the war in North Africa is a side bar.

I’ve always been pretty interested in the horror and the fascination of World War II. My husband Marc Stewart, who composed the music for bANGER, is really interested in the weapons and all that stuff, even though he’s the opposite of anything violent. So it’s really interesting to go into that fascination with this violence.

MKZ: A lot of your work often deals with gender. How do you feel that theme works into this piece, if at all?

TCF: It’s always present because in this piece I’m a woman playing a boy. At the beginning I make my perspective very clear, that I am who I am, yet I’m going to put on this persona. I make some comments about that in the piece.

MKZ: Why did you feel it was important to start off that way rather than just launch into character?

TCF: I just wanted to be very clear of where I was coming from. I wanted to reveal my attraction and the taboo of it. I’m a thirty-five year old woman, and this is my perspective. I also say in the opening monologue “I’m half man, on my father’s side.” It’s a joke, but at the same time I do believe we’re all a little bit of both. My experience has been quite fluid. I wasn’t brought up in a household where women do this and men do that. Sometimes you’re going to need to be more masculine, and sometimes you’re going to need to be more feminine. Sometimes you’re going to be really into wearing pink things, and sometimes you’re going to be really into looking like a boy and sometimes you’re going to want to be androgynous.

Because in most of my work I do that gender thing it’s important for me to have that fluidity, to have that freedom and to not feel like anybody owns gender. We all have our own experience with it. I don’t know what it’s like to live in a boy’s body, but I know what it feels like to have a lot of those emotions.

MKZ: Are there any other elements you feel are important to the piece?

TCF: The music and lights are pretty important. Marc Stewart has created this really amazing sound score. He’s managed to capture the emotional journey of this kid and his fascination with World War II and his life in high school. He’s managed to layer all these things in there that make it real. You hear the sound of the lockers closing, the kids, and then the war noises and the metal, and the guitar and it really brings the whole thing to life. It’s like another scene partner to me.

[img_assist|nid=66|title=Tara Cheyenne Friedenberg, bANGER, photo Chris Randle|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=206|height=288]James Proudfoot managed to make the Firehall theatre totally feel like a rock show, and also managed to make the light feel like it’s another character. It’s pretty interesting what those two have brought to the table.

MKZ: They must have just gone to town with this piece.

TCF: Yeah, I think everyone just had a really good time with this, because you know, who doesn’t want to rock out?

bANGER is being presented as a satellite event of this year’s Magnetic North Theatre Festival at the Firehall Arts Centre, June 11-14.