I WAS UNBECOMING THEN
Next Stage Festival/ Toronto Fringe at Buddies in Bad Times
Toronto
Supported by the Toronto Arts Council
by Lyndsey Bourne | music by Sam Kaseta | music direction Alexa Belgrave
cast Astrid Atherly, Olivia Daniels, Tkaia Green, Lara Hamburg, Anikka Hanson, Shannon Murtagh, Heeyun Park 박희윤, Riel Reddick-Stevens, Grace Rockett, Lizzie Song, 陳佳琦 Jenn Tan, Miranda Wiseman | swings Thea Mae Hesler, Ellyse Wolter
photos Taylor Long
In a high school music room in North Vancouver, twelve teenage girls assemble to practice and perfect their parts, desperate to please Bruce, the choir director.
Globe and Mail “Best Theatre of 2024 from Toronto, Stratford and Shaw”
I Was Unbecoming Then emerged as a standout piece of programming that heavily featured newcomers to the city’s theatre scene, all of whom knocked this project out of the park. Each song was perfectly in tune, and director Ilana Khanin exquisitely tapped into the show’s portraiture of mid-2000s girlhood (complete with velour tracksuits and rolled-down Uggs). I so hope for a remount in 2025.
Intermission Magazine “Our favourite theatre productions of 2024, in Toronto and beyond”
This was a new Canadian staging of a piece that’s been in development for a number of years by New York-based creators Lyndsey Bourne (book and lyrics), Sam Kaseta (music), and Ilana Khanin (direction). It made sense to me when I read that because the material is so smart and thoughtful — they’ve been cooking it for a while. It observes a group of young women in a North Vancouver high school who are in choir together, and you get a story about them as a community, as well as a couple of teachers that are very important to them.
It’s a depiction of that late adolescent moment, but really without cliches about that time. It takes those relationships, emotions, struggles, friendships, and loves very seriously. The staging was very stark, very low-budget, but so smart using what they had, just a couple of white rugs and a couple of stand lights. The performers would speak to each other or directly to the audience and would often move in sync. And this notion of them being on display brought a lot to the fore about that time of life, feeling like everyone’s looking at you — that’s what you want, but that’s also what you fear.
…I felt there was a real trust in the material, as well as a committed directorial approach.
The one that most fully shook up those conventions was “I Was Unbecoming Then,” an ensemble musical about girls becoming women in the Next Stage Theatre Festival.
The show’s dozen characters are members of a Vancouver high school choir, circa 2006. At the start of Ilana Khanin’s precise production, they strike poses on a big white carpet illuminated by standing lights (design by Echo Zhou) and gaze out to the audience. Immediately, the painful paradox of adolescence: You’re all looking at me. Stop looking at me. Please look at me.
When they start talking their banter is funny, banal, sometimes shocking. School reading assignments, gossip about the male choir teacher, sex. Interspersed monologues offer a different level of intimacy and insight, and beautifully delivered a cappella songs (book and lyrics are by Lyndsey Bourne, music by Sam Kaseta) bring the characters together to express shared experience.
… The significance and power of “Unbecoming” accumulates in the different layers of communication and how acutely the characters are keyed into each other, mirroring and competing and loving and hating.
The all too short Next Stage run of “I Was Unbecoming Then” has ended, but I expect it will not be the end of the road for this groundbreaking piece.
Broadway World review
Intermission review
A View from the Box review
She Does the City “I Was Unbecoming Then at Next Stage Explores Girlhood in the Early 2000s”