30 minutes, Mister Plummer

The small town of Stratford, in Southern Ontario, was named after the English town of Stratford-upon-Avon, the birthplace of William Shakespeare. In 1952, when the town was undergoing an economic decline, a local journalist named Tom Patterson founded the Stratford Shakespearean Festival, believing that the town should host theatrical performances. Now the largest event of its kind in Canada, the Stratford Festival presents plays from April to October, still presenting Shakespeare's vast repertoire, as well as classical and contemporary theater.

Anne Claire Poirier's short film comes 10 years after the festival was founded. By intertwining the daily summer life of the small provincial town with the actors' preparatory gestures, Poirier underlines the almost magical transformation from the trivial of everyday life to the sacred aspect of theatre. "How many minutes of day, Mr. Langham [the director], to create a single minute of night" she repeats. While giving us a glimpse into the sanctuary of the dressing rooms before a performance, the film reveals that what it is showing us is not the performance itself, but its creation. It seeks to capture on film the tipping point, the passage from one world to another, an extremely tenuous, invisible moment, which is concretized here by the transformation of the body. Poirier delivers a reflection on the enchantment and the spell of the game, which blurs identities in the game of representations. Who did she meet in Stratford? Actors or shadows coming from the past to reveal their secrets?
 

Naomie Décarie-Daigneault
Tënk's Artistic Director