Well Played, MCC, Well Played

When I first saw that Undermän would be presented at the Montreal Completement Cirque (MCC) festival this summer, my first thought went something like this: "Great, another completely male dominated circus show about the awesomeness of being a dude."

Then I remembered that Amaluna is also a part of the festival and I couldn't help but applaud the folks at MCC. As far as I'm concerned it was a very clever move on their part to have a counter point to the female centric Amaluna.

I've yet to see Undermän, so I can't really comment on it just yet. But I have seen Amaluna and they did an excellent job creating a show about women without coming off as trying too hard, being at all preachy, or even too one dimensional. I think that on its own, a show like Undermän could run those risks. Though from what I've heard, that's not at all the case. In my opinion, having both shows in the same festival gives each of them more merit and more weight. Especially since the themes are being expressed by different companies from different parts of the world. I've seen an institution do multiple shows where one cast was all male and the other was all female. But coming from the same source, each show was similar in feel and style. Seeing a four man show from Sweden vs. a huge scale production by Soleil should be pretty interesting,. And I for one look forward to seeing both.