SUBMITTED ARTICLE
There’s something deeply satisfying about watching a myth unravel — especially when it refuses to stay in one shape for long.
In MINOTAURUS!, an ensemble of performers takes the familiar language of ancient Greek tragedy and stretches it to its limits. The piece opens with heightened, almost ceremonial imagery — echoes of chorus, ritual and inevitability — before sharply shifting gears.
Suddenly, the tone fractures. Rap music cuts through the atmosphere. The physical language loosens. What felt controlled becomes unpredictable, even unruly.
This is not a straightforward retelling. It’s a constant transformation.
Written and directed by Brette Little with choreography by Charlotte Priest, both graduates of Simon Fraser University’s Contemporary Arts BFA program, the production brings together dancers and actors in a physically driven exploration of the Minotaur myth — one that refuses to settle into a single mood or meaning. Instead, it moves restlessly between intensity and absurdity, structure and collapse.
The monster at its centre is no exception. Here, the Minotaur doesn’t stay fixed —i t’s part wrestler, part Greek mythological creature, shifting between something fearsome, exaggerated, and at times unmistakably ridiculous.
Clown elements — drawn in part from Little’s training with Philippe Gaulier — thread through the work as a disruptive force. Just when the world feels grounded in myth, it slips. Gestures are pushed too far. Images tip into absurdity. The performers embrace a kind of controlled chaos, where precision and failure sit side by side.
The ensemble — Anthony Charrette, Simone Cazabon, Michael Bean, Zach Lundrie, Charlotte Priest, Roy Val Clery, Kristen Frampton and Rigobert Kefferputz — moves as both a unified force and a collection of distinct voices, constantly building and undoing the world of the piece in real time. There’s a sense of risk throughout, as though the performance could veer in a new direction at any moment.
Rather than guiding the audience cleanly through a story, MINOTAURUS! invites you to stay with the shifts — to experience the tension between the serious and the absurd, the mythic and the contemporary.
Because in this version of the myth, the labyrinth isn’t a structure. It’s a state of mind — and there’s no clear way out.
MINOTAURUS! runs at Bullock Lake Farm on April 17, 18, 19, 24, 25 and 26 at 7 p.m.
Tickets are available through Eventbrite.