from http://www.themixedmessage.blogspot.com/
Nov 30, 2010
Nina’s Stage Alchemy
Last night I attended the dress rehearsal preview of The Silicone Diaries re-mount at Buddies and Bad Times Theatre. I had the privilege to witness an exquisite live stage alchemy. Alchemist of by gone times worked with base inanimate elements that they believed were very much alive. The artist takes silicone and finds an essential life force within something perceived as static. Silicone serves as a base element for her philosopher’s stone-her body, her work.
Nina Arsenault one woman show delivered concentric circles of layered meaning and sensations. Watching her delve into her extraordinary surgically assisted journey was like peering through a kaleidoscope of spiralling spiritual fractals. The movement contained within her tightly poised, breath-focused presence riveted from start to finish. Her creative aperture narrowed and widened, shooting out narratives of precise body language. The script lines lazered over the audience They didn’t read as lines at all. I felt enfolded in an intensely private revelation of personal truth.
A beautiful thread of tension ran through the entire experience. You have a confessional-style, idiosyncratic delivery of the script interwoven with a highly aestheticized, reductive set and lighting design. (Hats off to Michelle Ramsy and Richard Fern, responsible for lighting and sound, respectively) This textural weave of her unique voice and structural stage elements seamlessly connect to her body via multi-media installation. Images float to an appropriately sparse sound-scape. The background video along with the score contextualized the entire experience with a sort of free flowing psychic dream frame.
The brilliance emerges from slowing down, compressing a lifetime of experience so that the audience was able to find space in which to house the meaning of trauma. 
Chaos being distilled. The myriad of artistic influences range from Buthoh (a Japanese art form emerging from the bombing of Hiroshima) to performance phenomena, the late Spalding Gray. These references create additional pathways into the work. Get into the spell, check out Nina’s captivating stage Alchemy at Buddies and Bad Times Theatre.
*The Silicone Diaries runs from Nov 25Th to December 11th at Buddies and Bad Times Theatre 12 Alexander Street (416-975-8555)