HOTEL BARDOT
by Heidi Darchuk
Directed by Guy Zimmerman
with Julia Prudhomme, Chris Goodsen, Corryn Cummins, Brad Culver, Michael Chick, Johnny Klein
Set Design: Tim Keating, Shaun Tyne, Lights: Dan Reed, Costumes: Gwendolyn Jac, Kim Debus, Sound Design: Brad Culver and John Zalewski, Original Music: Brad Culver, Andrew Gilbert, Stage Management: Maggie Goddard, Poster Design: Darrick Chamberlin, Additional Design: Channah Levy, Production Assistance: Jessica Emmanuel, Corryn Cummins
NOTES ON THE PLAY
Inspired by Freud, Jung, Lacan, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and by Tantric texts, whose suggestion to “meditate on your own death” became Darchuk’s mantra during the writing of the play. The action opens as the heroine, K, enters into an already broken afterlife in the form of a rotting hotel and manages to level it to the ground and then escape, in her way, destroying time. By doing so, K transcends a human life of victimhood to become a version of Kali, Indian Goddess of annihilation, time, blackness. The writer here is operating as a lucid dreamer, navigating her nonsensical and surreal landscape with clear, open eyes, fully awake, and unafraid.