Review of the Transcendental Mirror Variety Show

   The Transcendental Mirror variety show on Thursday nights at 303 Augusta in Kensington Market is from an audience’s perspective a pretty good night out. However, from a performer’s point of view it is disorganized and often indifferent to the needs of the artists involved.                    

   The talent is certainly various and often entertaining, and the show itself, hosted by Lauren Stein and David Swartz, benefits from each of their particular areas of interest. Lauren is a student of improvisational theatre, and at least ten minutes of the evening are set aside for an improv skit that is directed by her and performed by volunteers from the audience. David is a painter and the influence of his background is shown in a very unique aspect of the show: each night two blank canvases are placed at the back of the stage and two visual artists work on paintings to provide a living backdrop for the musicians, poets, comedians and actors as they are performing.

  The quality of the performances covers a range from the undeveloped to the professional. But even when the poetry sounds like it fell from between a magnet and a refrigerator there is often a charm that shines through. Or when one particular comedian returns week after week to clumsily and with bad timing tell the same thirty year old joke, that in itself is often funnier than if he had accomplished a slick delivery.

   One problem with this event though is that the audience is not always engaged with what is taking place onstage. Conversations, often quite loud ones, continue while performances are taking place.

   Granted, the venue is in a restaurant, the Waterfalls Tapas, and groups of people sometimes are there to get together for socializing over a meal. But other people are there for the show, and if those regular audience members were encouraged to be quiet they would create an atmosphere that newcomers could tune in to and fall into harmony with. I know this is possible because I accomplished that very thing during the seven years that I ran an open stage for writers. One can train an audience to at least show, if not have respect for the efforts that are being made on stage.

   When I spoke about this to David and Lauren, David argued that they don’t want to have to police the audience. He thinks that it is the responsibility of the performer to capture the audience’s attention. I disagree. The interaction between artist and observer is a relationship, and as in any relationship there are responsibilities on both sides. If one goes to an art flavoured variety show one should expect the artist on stage to perform their best work, which is not necessarily their most entertaining. And audiences at such events are not supposed to be passive suckling babies. They must also bring their attention forward to actively meet the performer halfway. If they are looking for art to serve as wallpaper for their conversations there are other clubs that offer such pablum elsewhere in the vicinity.

   Other problems with the Transcendental Mirror tend to be uneven management of performance times and either lack of or insufficient communication with the acts as to how much time they get to perform or whether they get to perform at all.

   Case in point: on Thursday June 23 there were at least ten acts that wanted to be part of the show. Things got rolling after ten o’clock and since the open stage tends to wind down around midnight, the math is fairly simple. When you allow time for introductions and setting up, on such a night there is less than ten minutes available for each performance if divided equally. On this particular evening though, Lauren seemed very excited about an act from England called Eyes for Gertrude. They were a slick combo consisting of two women with well constructed and melodic, though lyrically uninteresting songs sung in nearly perfect harmony. But when they performed it was for at least twenty minutes. This would have been fine if Eyes for Gertrude had been introduced from the start as a rare featured performance and that the other performers would have less time on stage. But they didn’t. Everyone who performed took ten minutes at least and as for the order of appearance, priority was given to acts that were newest and therefore the most interesting to Lauren. The result was that around fifteen minutes after midnight it became clear that there would be no time for three of the most faithful regulars to perform. But instead of apologizing, Lauren’s airy fairy suggestion was that all the discarded performers would feel alright about the situation if they just got up together and did an improv with her. No one wanted to. Finally, one of the regulars, a poet/songwriter, was quickly approached by David and told that if he wanted to do something he could go up at that moment and do it. He was not properly introduced like everyone else had been, but rather got up on stage as if he were an afterthought on the part of the hosts and sang only one song.

   So yes, the Transcendental Mirror is a good variety show to sit and watch. But in their relationship to the participants, the hosts, rather than throwing everything up in the air and hoping that it all falls into place, need to get organized in terms of time management. They also need to realize that the talent that graces their stage is not something to be used or discarded as if it were the paint chosen or not chosen by the painters on the canvases at the back of the stage.