From rooftop poets to opera, the Heart of the City programming will illuminate the Downtown Eastside

One of the functions of the Heart of the City festival is to shed light on Vancouver’s most misunderstood neighbourhood, the Downtown Eastside. And in the case of Illuminating the Four Corners, which takes place at the intersection of Main and Hastings next Saturday (November 7), festival organizers are taking that mandate quite literally.

“We’re going to project very large images onto the side of Bruce Eriksen Place,” says the festival’s executive artistic producer, Terry Hunter, on the line from the Strathcona home he shares with associate artistic director Savannah Walling. “They’re going to be portraits of people from the Downtown Eastside, so neighbourhood residents will see themselves projected up on the sides of the building.”

The images will also be shown in the windows of the Carnegie Community Centre, but there’s more to the project than screening the faces of those who might otherwise be regarded as faceless statistics. Stationed on balconies and rooftops, and using a wireless sound system, poets will celebrate the Downtown Eastside in verse; bands, bagpipers, and the Carnegie Village Choir will make music; and community activists will brandish banners emblazoned with the words inscribed on the faí§ade of the Eriksen building—words like dignity, home, courage, vote, voice, and dream.

Illuminating the Four Corners is essentially a participatory performance: the anticipated crowds will be as much a part of the scene as the entertainers. That philosophy is central to much of Heart of the City’s programming: the festival is more about unearthing the hidden talent—and the hidden stories—in the Downtown Eastside than it is about conventional artistry.

That’s a point Walling stresses when asked about the Downtown Eastside Music Theatre Showcase, which presents 30 songs from seven different DTES–themed productions, at the Russian Hall on Friday (October 30). Among the composers and songwriters involved are such consummate professionals as Michael Creber, Joelysa Pankanea, Wyckham Porteous, Bill Sample, and Earl Peach; this is no amateur-hour undertaking. But the pros are on board to give form to stories generated by community members, as Walling explains.

“A lot of the scripts—and the lyrics, too—were born out of a sense of outreach and research,” she says, citing such productions as Condemned: The Opera, which deals with low-income housing issues; The Returning Journey, about addiction and recovery; and last year’s tribute to community organizer Eriksen, Bruce: The Musical. “Many of them were born in collaborative creative processes, in which these stories and characters emerged from a collective voice”¦.That’s why they carry the values, the issues, and the concerns of the neighbourhood. They’re embedded in the songs and in the plays to which the community has given birth.”

It might seem odd to use musical theatre—a form that’s often associated with shallow but spectacular entertainments like Cats or Evita—to talk about the poor and oppressed, but there are sound reasons for this choice. One is that the program is open to performers of diverse abilities; you don’t have to sing like Ben Heppner to deliver a commanding performance. Another is that there’s a long tradition—in Europe, at least—of music-theatre librettists and composers who are concerned with social issues; think of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. Walling notes, too, that both she and Hunter trained as musicians before turning to interdisciplinary and community-based art forms.

Most of all, though, there’s the idea that the Downtown Eastside has long been home to performances that mix sound with social significance.

“Historically, this neighbourhood has always been a hotbed of music,” says Walling. “It’s been embedded in traditional ceremonies, cultural celebrations, and a strong love of musical theatre of all kinds, from Chinese and western opera to musical comedy, to vaudeville and minstrel shows. Coast Salish theatrical ceremonies were witnessing and marking important life events long before the immigrants arrived and started forming all these cultural groups for spiritual and community support and for entertainment. That’s been going on since the neighbourhood was founded, and it’s still going on today.”