At rEvolver Festival, absurdist physical comedy abounds in The Routine and tony wrestles a stranger
Theatre artists Tony Adams and Joylyn Secunda unpack the theme of transformation through self-acceptance in their respective shows
Tony Adams in tony wrestles a stranger. Photo by Jake Insley
Upintheair Theatre presents tony wrestles a stranger on May 23, 24, and 26, and The Routine on May 31 and June 1 and 2 at The Cultch’s Vancity Culture Lab as part of rEvolver Festival
AT ONE POINT in Tony Adams’s solo show tony wrestles a stranger, the Ottawa–born, Victoria–based theatre artist gives an ode to all the men in their life, and then devours a raw hotdog for each one of them.
Elsewhere during the performance, Adams engages in a 15-minute burpee session while dissecting their relationship to their body for the audience. And in yet another instance, to which the show’s title alludes, they invite an audience member up on stage for a full-on wrestling match.
To stitch together these hilarious scenes, the absurdist physical comedy takes on a non-traditional format, with cabaret-style moments instead of a straightforward narrative. It’s what creates room for all these visceral moments, Adams says—but at its core, the production is a personal deep-dive into displays of masculinity.
“I grew up not knowing my father,” Adams tells Stir over a phone call ahead of the rEvolver Festival. “And in the last eight or 10 years, this kind of fascination with that started to develop, where I was like, ‘Oh, I’m kind of obsessed with not knowing my father,’ and my relationship to older men, too, because I never am able to be cool around older men. I always feel like I’m vying for their affection and their attention.
“So I started digging into that,” Adams continues, “and it all kind of meshed together to sync those two up. In the show, a stranger does come in and wrestle me, and so there’s this chance that the person I’m fighting could be my dad. And whether that’s some Oedipus complex thing or something, I don’t know—but there’s this slight possibility that I’m there fighting with my dad.”
Adams’s tony wrestles a stranger is one of 14 mainstage productions that will take place at The Cultch from May 22 to June 2 as part of Upintheair Theatre’s rEvolver Festival, an annual showcase of cutting-edge live performances. Themed “transformation through self-acceptance”, this year’s festival highlights works that allow space for embracing identities and nurturing personal growth.
In the same veins of self-acceptance and physical comedy as Adams, Joylyn Secunda is staging their solo mime show The Routine, about a lonely, disgruntled office worker who doesn’t appreciate the finer things in life. In search of connection and fulfillment, they venture through a whimsical portal, sparking an inner transformation.
Joylyn Secunda in The Routine.
Secunda is no stranger to the realm of absurdist physical comedy. Take, for instance, their one-person musical satire The Moaning Yoni, which toured across Canada and had a sold-out run at the Vancouver Fringe Festival in 2019. Through monologues, slapstick comedy, singing, and dancing, Secunda told the story of a college student with an anthropomorphic vagina, whose only wish was to be normal.
With The Routine, the theatre artist—who trained in the art of clowning at Manitoulin Conservatory for Creation and Performance, and puppetry at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity—is taking a purely physical approach. The show is completely nonverbal, and uses mime techniques with layers of sound design to convey its story.
“It starts out with the main character going through a day-in-the-life type of routine where all these different things go wrong—for example, stepping in dog poo, and getting stuck in a revolving door,” Secunda tells Stir by phone. “So there are different moments throughout their routine that go wrong, and then as it progresses, there are more absurdist kinds of physical comedy as well.”
The Routine is directed by their father, performing and visual artist David Secunda, who helped co-create the show through Mycelium Theatre. The younger Secunda’s movement-based practice also draws upon years of observing and learning from their mother, dancer Linda Arkelian, which allowed them to both feel comfortable in their body and form deep connections with audiences from an early age.
It’s those roots that have helped them develop an almost universally relatable concept for The Routine, which highlights the mindset shift of an average working-class citizen.
“I’ve never worked in an office before, but I think we’re all kind of experiencing capitalism and how that can create loneliness,” Secunda says. “And even as an artist, where I’m doing a career that I really love and I’m passionate about, of course the constraints of money and needing to work, and just the way that capitalism limits my choices and also affects my relationships, is definitely something that I can relate to.”
Tony Adams in tony wrestles a stranger. Photo by Jake Insley
For Adams, absurdist physical comedy taps into what they call a “cerebral” feeling.
“It’s a way for me to not pretend while I’m on stage,” Adams says. “I’m doing things that are going to elicit real feelings from my body, that are going to evoke certain things from me. And so that way, it’s very palpable. I think it allows the audience to kind of come in more, you know? I’m sure not a lot of people have sat there and eaten half a dozen raw hotdogs, but they can imagine what that’s like,” they say with a laugh. “It’s a pretty easy thing to connect to.”
Adams has created over 15 pieces as co-artistic director of May Can Theatre, and brought their show Happiness™ to the rEvolver Festival in 2017. In the two-hander about a pair of glum salesmen trying to sell happiness, they starred alongside their frequent collaborator and best friend of 20 years, Cory Thibert, who is now the director of tony wrestles a stranger.
Back when the pair were in their early 20s, recalls Adams, Thibert wrote them a 20-minute solo show about a keen actor waiting to go into an audition. Adams calls it the “soft launch” into their solo-theatre career, and tony wrestles a stranger expands upon those early-day skills in a more grounded way.
Over the past decade of Adams’s life, during which they embraced their queerness and redefined their gender, the playwright has honed in on addressing concepts of masculinity in their works. Ultimately, tony wrestles a stranger is an ode to self-acceptance that rings true to the theme of this year’s rEvolver Festival (as does Secunda’s The Routine)—and Adams couldn’t be more excited to bring it to the stage in its final form, expanded upon from a private presentation in Victoria last spring.
“It’s for all the bastards out there, all the fatherless kids, and all the people that have strained relationships with their fathers,” Adams says. “After doing the show in Victoria, so many people came up to me going, ‘I can relate so much.’ And it’s like, wow, that sucks that it’s such an easy thing to connect to. But I think it’s important—as a masc-presenting person, especially—to be very deliberate about being vulnerable and asking for help.” 
Related Articles
