Last seen in Salmon Arm in Aug. 2018 playing to a sold-out house with Flute Loops, Devon More returns March 16 with Berlin Waltz, a one-woman show jam-packed with multimedia and politics.
More’s Cold War Cabaret is both a highly entertaining personal travelogue, and a most unusual multimedia history lesson featuring songs, slam poetry and sock puppets.
Set against a backdrop of captivating projection media of Berliner scenes, street art and military parades, the show promises fresh content – including updated musical arrangements and new songs in the live-looped original score.
Living as an expat in Berlin from 2008-2012 during her formative years as an artist had a deep and lasting impact on defining More’s purpose, priorities and politics as an artist.
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“I repatriated to North America at a time when the Syrian refugee crisis was revealing countless ‘invisible’ walls in our global village, ‘socialism’ was basically a swear word, and Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing confirmed that internal surveillance was standard practice by most countries, including Canada,” says More in her artist’s note. “It was a shocking reintroduction to ‘home’ and I was frustrated by what I felt were dramatically ignorant public policy errors – and the apparent apathy of those affected by them.”
“Berlin Waltz” was created in an attempt to share the lessons More learned from living in the microcosm of Berlin, where the fallout of political and economic ideologies can be felt on the level of a single human’s experience – and where people understand and respect both their power and responsibility as members of an active citizenry.
“It was my attempt to empower ordinary people to think and act together for the collective better in order to achieve seemingly impossible positive change,” she says. “In years since it premiered, the format of Berlin Waltz has been refined, and its commentary continues to evolve in order to touch on current events. But I believe its core message has become no less timely, topical, or indeed necessary.”
Berlin Waltz takes place at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 16 at Shuswap Theatre. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $14 and are available at shuswaptheatre.com.
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