In verse and over the phone – Ned Dickens’ debut at the Kick & Push Festival
“Stories on the phone, starring the sky.”
This is how playwright and storyteller Ned Dickens describes why a bunch of strangers are collected together on a conference call. From Kingston’s Breakwater Park to my stepdad’s deck in Toronto to the bedrooms of a youth theatre group in India, Luke and the Big Circles is a cycle of four stories in verse and over the phone. The show has yet to begin and Dickens is already painting an image of the sunset with his words, joking that he’s proud of the lighting design. An audience member quips back, “The windmills are a nice touch.” He playfully corrects them with the proper terminology—wind turbines—before drawing attention back to the heart of the horizon. “Sunsets are as unique as snowflakes,” he reminds us.
Originally a CBC Radio drama, what Dickens envisioned was a story for the seasons that was as intimate as it was all-inclusive. Luke and the Big Circles follows the ebb and flow of a young boy growing up in Kensington Market. The Spark, the Glow, the Ember, the Glimmer—equinoxes and solstices are used to frame the returning of the light and how that represents the new hope and life for someone experiencing the cyclical nature of the seasons for the first time. This evening, Ned has decided we should enter at the springtime with ‘The Spark’ so we can end with ‘The Glimmer’, allowing us to reflect on the year that has passed and the year that is to come.
I’m watching grey clouds graze the trees while my stepdad holds an umbrella over the grill so dinner won’t get wet, and I realize how tender of a moment it is, to be able to enjoy the act of someone who cares enough to share with you a story. And despite the weather saying otherwise, it’s a wonderfully warm ending to the wild ride of the 2020 Kick and Push Festival. Luke and the Big Circles is a sweet finish to the unique programming of innovative and inter-disciplinary performance the festival has seen this year. Using simple means to tell a simple story, Dickens strips down the complexities and confusion of communication and focuses on the beauty of daily life—the beauty of a bunch of strangers looking at the same sky, listening to the same voice, sharing the same story.
Catch Icara: a play by Ned Dickens running at the Tett Centre for Creativity & Learning in The Rehearsal Hall from September 15-19.