In Henri Fabergé’s Heligoland Follies, a “punk theatre series” currently playing
out a six-month run at the University of Toronto’s Hart House, the title character
finds himself stranded on a strange island in the North Sea amidst two warring
factions vying for supremacy. Sometimes Napoleon visits. You might remember
Henri Fabergé and the Adorables, a local indie band specializing in playful,
rootsy pop songs and fronted by the charismatic M. Fabergé. In 2010, they
shifted gears by performing their first theatre series, Henri Fabergé’s Feint of
Hart. Like its predecessor, Heligoland Follies combines concert, soap opera, film,
and comedy show. It tells an ongoing story, and each episode is only staged
once.
We caught up with Henri himself and Juliann Wilding, his bandmate and partner.
She’s also Heligoland Follies’ art director, which has required her to fabricate,
among other things, some very unusual anatomical prosthetics.
Tell us more about hermaphrodite prosthetics and what they have to do
with the show.
Juliann: Well, Regina is played by Roger Bainbridge, and she’s kind of one of
the central characters… There’s a moment in the last episode where they reveal
her body to the public… So, when they disrobe her, she’s wearing this beautiful
hermaphrodite genital prosthetic. I sculpted it out of leather, and I made it look
like a sort of combination of male and female genitalia, but also a little bit fantasy.
Because it was for stage, it had to be larger than probably a natural organ on
your body would be, so that it could be visible. And I also used images from
the reproductive systems of plants as some of my reference points because
most plants are hermaphrodites, and they have these very intricate internal
reproductive systems that are very beautiful and they do look like a combination
of masculine and feminine–the way that we could imagine, I guess, them
coming together–so the piece itself I would say could exist on a human body,
but it’s maybe a little bit more flamboyant.
Henri: Regina and my character, Henri Fabergé, are both caught between these
two groups that represent absolutes. There’s the Spiritualists who’ve got caught
up in this spiritual faith, and the Rationalists, but they’re taking the same sort of
absolute position in their ideas of science and progress. So, Regina’s unveiling is
kind of–she’s put on display as more of an object–
J: Right.
H: It’s a dehumanizing moment.
Let’s talk a bit about the context for all this hermaphroditic genital
exposure. Does Heligoland Follies follow Feint of Hart? Is it a sequel?
H: Yeah, although it takes place a hundred years earlier.
J: It’s next in Henri Fabergé’s life chronologically, but we wanted to explore a
different point in history, so we used time travel. No big deal.
Does he actually physically time travel?
J: Yeah, we never explained it at all, actually.
H: We have an answer for that, but we don’t…
J: You can explain it if you want.
H: Well, I guess rather than being a hero, I’m sort of a witness to history. I’m
developing as a person throughout my life and it’s almost irrelevant as to which
time in history those pivotal moments happen. So, I think jumping around allows
us to make light of how we deal with the present day in comparison to history. I
don’t think necessarily that the past has to be chronological.
J: Or linear. It’s more sort of… He’s bearing witness to different points in history,
but he’s also living within those moments. To me, it translates as, like, if you’re
really entrenched in a book that you’re reading that takes place within a different
time period, and you’re really imagining yourself within that time. But instead of
just imagining, he’s actually living out his life in that time.
For those who missed it, can you give us a quick synopsis of Feint of Hart?
J: Well, in that series, Henri was attending a naval academy. And by the end of
the series, he had been disavowed from his family’s station, kicked out of school,
accused of murdering his lover, and was on the lam and being hunted, basically.
So then, time passes. We don’t know how much time has passed.
And it’s passed in the wrong way?
J: Yeah, or a different way. And he’s discovered by a man named Lex, who takes
him to the island of Heligoland where this group is attempting the utopian ideal.
H: The community has been established for twenty years or so, so they’re in
the routine that they’ve established, but the arrival of Henri and the initiation of
a genetics program both coincide to transform the community, as various things
start to unravel based on both of those occurrences.
How does Napoleon figure into the equation?
J: Well, the show is set during the time of Napoleon’s exile, so we wanted to take
advantage of that and have him come to Heligoland.
H: Napoleon enters as a reminder of the outside world in this isolated
community. A representative of that military/industrial complex that is starting to
emerge from Europe and forcing nations to establish their boundaries. But he’s
just batshit crazy. Our Napoleon is starting to lose his mind. We reference the
idea of him being slowly poisoned, and in our show, he’s definitely I think the
most manic and unhinged Napoleon that I’ve ever seen depicted.
What’s the process of creating an episode of Heligoland Follies like?
You’ve got music, you’ve got sketch performers, you’ve got film, and it
seems like you’ve got some pretty serious dramatic moments as well–how
does this all come together?
J: We have a writing team of six, which includes Henri and myself, Kayla Lorette,
Miguel Rivas, Alex Tindal, and Roger Bainbridge. And so, at the beginning, we
had a few arc points that we wanted to hit, or that we knew the series would
take us through, but each episode is written after the previous one has been
performed… So, it’s definitely more hectic, and we’re all under a lot of pressure
between episodes to not only write all the content and the philosophy behind that
content, but that also dictates what I have to make or get done for that month. So
it’s, “oh, we need a hermaphroditic genital piece,” or “we need a giant turtle,” “we
need exploding eggs,” “we need moving water.” So I’ll have sometimes only two
weeks, two and half weeks to make all that stuff.
H: It’s a labour of love. Emphasis on the labour. But I think it’s also helping us
develop a working process. We really like working with all our collaborators, but
it’s really allowed our smaller collective–like, the six of us–to hone how we
understand working together. After Feint of Hart, we were asked to perform a
condensed version of the show, so we just got together and put 15 hours of live,
work-shopped show into 2 hours. And that was whole other crazy thing. So we’re
not even sure where this takes us. Maybe a television show or something.
Do people ever come in thinking they’re just going to see a concert?
H: I think there are people who wander in wondering what it is. Like, they see us
setting up some instruments, so they sit around waiting for the band to start. And
we just unleash hell on them.
J: The Hart House Music Committee wanted Henri to be the artist-in-residence.
And I think they thought he was gonna just throw a rock show every month.
H: This was not necessarily what they had in mind.
J: No. So, when we did Feint of Hart as the first one, it was way more ambitious
and involved than they had imagined.
H: Well, last year, they appreciated the effort of us trying something new, but I
think it was a bit overwhelming for them. And they asked me to come back and
do a similar show, but scale it down.
J: We haven’t scaled it down.
H: Yeah, just didn’t work out that way.
What would be a good warning or preparation for someone who wants to
come to one of the upcoming episodes who hasn’t been to a single episode
and knows nothing?
J: I think that if you were going in cold, I’d say just keep an open mind and be
prepared for some ambiguity, but have a good time. I think it’s still an exciting
experience whether you have the required information to fully comprehend it or
not.
H: I would say the best plan would be to book us for an interview and then get us
to explain it all.
Henri Fabergé’s Heligoland Follies Episode V: Back to the Water is performed
tonight in the Arbor Room at Hart House (7 Hart House Circle, UofT),
doors at 9pm, show at 10pm. PWYC.
Johnnie Walker is a playwright and actor. Follow him on Twitter at @handsomejohnnie.
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