“I think people long for their childhood years, but not their teenage years,” laments Alexander Devriendt, director of Once And For All We’re Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up And Listen. “But that’s when we’re the most rebellious, when we have energy!”
By “energy,” though, Devriendt isn’t referring to a do-good, change-the-world spirit. As he explained in an after-show Q&A on Wednesday, “The play is a celebration of the teenage destructive force. We look at the positive side of it without being afraid of its destructive power.”
Still, Once and For All has received some remarkably constructive feedback. What began as a refusal on the part of Devriendt and writer Joeri Smet to work with existing plays for a Belgian youth theatre club led to a five-star review at the Edinburgh Festival in 2008 and a world tour. A year and a half later, with one original cast member pushing 20, Devriendt knew it was time to put his show to rest. Once and For All’s current production as part of Harbourfront’s World Stage will be its last with the original cast (who also contributed much of the play's text.)
The play’s premise is simple. Each of its dozen scenes begins with a smattering of mismatched chairs onstage as the actors, aged 16 to 20, enter in the same order. They proceed to interact with the same cast mates across the vignettes, playing with the same props as music blares in the background.
The scene is replayed again and again through different filters, often marked by the use of songs. Jose Gonzalez's "Heartbeats," for example, launches the teens into a Dawson's Creek-esque montage of make-out sessions, while psychedelic tunes lead to a collective drug-fuelled stupor. Non-musical scenes are just as effective: in one, the cast robotically recites their previous actions without performing them. (“I French kiss Aaron,” intones one girl nasally. “I fuck up photos,” recites a boy.)
What makes these variations on a scene immensely watchable, however, is the extent to which the teens are left to unleash their inner desires onstage. They beat each other up, hook up shamelessly, and totally trash the Enwave Theatre stage in each episode. And strangely, the more surreal the scenes become, the more familiar they feel.
Devriendt’s aim was always to have the kids do what felt right to them onstage, getting away from adults’ ideas of what teenagehood “should” be. “I didn’t want to use them as actors,” Devriendt notes, “I wanted to use them as persons.” Once and For All thus truly succeeds at capturing the turbulent ordinariness of the teenage spirit—unleashing pent up anger one moment, giggling profusely the next, having love go unrequited or fulfilled based only on what feels right in a particular moment.
This sense of spontaneity sometimes gets lost. One actress, for instance, tries to address the notion of awkwardness by having the audience scream back at the teens. The idea is carried forth more eloquently by 16-year-old Koba, who walks on stage alone, recounting the repeated narrative through the social dynamics at play, including her own shifting sense of exclusion.
Moments like these are what make Once and For All veer into cathartic territory. Of course, it's just as enjoyable watching the sheer exuberance on stage.
“Do you really have so much fun in your real life?” asks one audience member at the end of the show.
“Not in the same way,” laughs teenaged Verona.
Then again, “fun” is only one of the forces unleashed in Once and For All, alongside social tension and drug-related curiousity. And as much as audience members can feel the experience vicariously, this show may also inspire those who long to feel like teenagers again.
Once And For All We’re Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up And Listen runs at the Enwave Theatre through February 20. For more information, visit harbourfrontcentre.com
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