There’s not a lot of narrative surprise in Marathon

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      By TJ Dawe. Presented by the Vancouver Fringe Festival. At Studio 1398 on Tuesday, March 17. Continues until March 29

      Sometimes TJ Dawe builds fantastic narrative structures (Tired Clichés). Sometimes he breaks your heart with his honesty (Medicine). And sometimes he delivers extended TED talks, which is what he’s doing in his current production, Marathon.

      In Marathon, which is Dawe’s 14th solo piece (I started watching this guy in 1997), he explores the Enneagram model of human personality.

      In his writing, Dawe likes to flip back and forth between narrative threads, let the resonance between those threads sing, and then tie them together at the end. In Marathon, the secondary threads are about Dawe’s artistic career and his lacklustre performance as a high-school track-and-field athlete. So we find out that his Enneagram personality type, Number 4, the individualist, struggles with social connections.

      Sure enough, that struggle is reflected in his life as solo performer who is heralded but who constantly positions himself as a lonely outsider. And the track-and-field story provides an overarching metaphor about the importance of endurance, of committing to the long run when it comes to personal growth.

      If this all sounds pretty tidy, that’s because it is. There’s not a lot of narrative surprise or emotional depth in Marathon; it’s mostly an amiable 75-minute lecture about a mildly interesting but somewhat dubious form of psychology. Whether or not you buy the Enneagram model, listening to an extended explanation of it isn’t very theatrical.

      With his lanky, expressive body and his gently amused, openhearted manner, Dawe is a charming performer—kind of like a talking Marcel Marceau—but if he’s not telling a compelling story, why listen?

      PostSecret: The Show, which Dawe directed at the Firehall in January, was also very much like a long TED talk about loneliness.

      Dawe is a gifted guy and he can be courageous. We’re lucky to have him in our midst. But lecturing is far from his most engaging mode. Artistically, there’s a big difference between exploring the unknown, which can be exciting, and illustrating preconceived points, which is generally not.

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