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Laura GodfreyGraduated with a BA from York University in 2008, where I worked as the Assistant Arts Editor at Excalibur, the university's community newspaper...
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Fringe Festival 2009 (10), shadowcast, spoiler alertStep aside, Bella and Sookie – this year’s Fringe Festival is bringing back the leading lady of a vampire franchise from before your time, with her very own Scooby gang to boot.
Starting this week at the Bloor Cinema, dreams will come true for fans of Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer. On July 2, 5 and 10, the show’s critically-acclaimed musical episode, “Once More With Feeling,” finds its way onstage as a shadow-cast, where enthusiastic performers will recreate the show as it plays on a movie screen behind them.
For fans of the butt-kicking Buffy franchise, this will be one more chance to fill the void created when the series ended in 2003. And for Justin Decloux, the show’s director, this performance offers an opportunity to manifest his own Buffy fandom into something tangible.
“I started looking at [other live] versions on the Internet, and I thought, man, this is kind of bland,” he said. “But because we’re not doing a straight adaptation of what’s happening on the screen, we can give it our own little twist… Our mission is for the audience to never really look at the screen.”
Decloux, who studied TV broadasting in Ottawa, moved to Toronto two years ago and found a job as promotions manager of the Bloor Cinema. When “Once More With Feeling” was confirmed as one of this year’s Fringe performances, he immediately jumped on board.
None of the actors in this shadow-cast are professionals. Most of them are just fans willing to participate. But after midnight rehearsals at the Bloor, scrounging for props and costumes and a brunette Buffy (Amanda Vasquez-Peddie) dying her hair blonde, it’s clearly more than just another gig to Decloux’s personal Scooby gang – especially since none of them will see a dime for their work.
Devotees of the series should watch for intentional gags, where the cast pokes fun at the episode: Willow’s (Michelle Mohan) controlling nature is exposed through choreography during the love ballad “Under Your Spell,” sung by her smitten, oblivious girlfriend Tara (Sarah Behl). And Dawn (Gillian Frederick), Buffy’s trouble-making younger sister, is finally shut down by the cast during her short-lived song “Dawn’s Lament.”
And there’s at least one more surprise: Spike, the conflicted vampire whose sexual tension with Buffy could fill the Hellmouth, is played by 12-year-old Nathan Wilson. Although the possibilities for impropriety abound in this casting choice, have faith – this young Whedon fan brings confidence and humour to the role, and any sexual mischief between him and Buffy is “creatively avoided.”
So why, after being off the air for more than six years, is Buffy still relevant? How did it pave the way for a successful comic book reincarnation and a soon-to-be-realized relaunch of the terrible 1992 movie? Decloux says the Buffy franchise attracts its fans with complex characters the audience can relate to.
“You could have the greatest story in the world, but if you don’t care about the characters, it doesn’t matter,” he said. “And in Buffy, you do care about the characters – they’re endearing, they’re interesting. Watching every episode is like hanging out with friends.”
So if you’re in the mood to hang out with some old friends, stake out your tickets now for one of three performances at the Bloor Cinema. “Once More With Feeling” is part of the Bloor’s Silver Stage series, which also includes shadowcasts of Jurassic Park, Blue Velvet, Repo! The Genetic Opera and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.