Your brother. Remember?

Right now, the annual High Performance Rodeo is taking place in Calgary. One of my favorite websites, Calgary is Awesome, held a draw for two tickets to see the show Your brother. Remember? AND yours truly won :)

Usually on Thursdays, Jason and I like to indulge in tacos and Jersey Shore (feel free to judge, I heart my guidos). This week, we decided to check out this show. Although Jason wasn't a huge fan, I loved it. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I love it.

Basically, this is a show about two brothers, Gator and Zach, who filmed re-enactments of Jean Claude Van Dam movies when they were teenagers. 20 years later, they get together to re-enact and film the same scenes. One brother had chosen the career path of an actor, the other brother had become an addict.

The layering of the mash-ups of the 3 films (the original JCVD film, the scenes from when the brothers were teens and the later re-enactments) provided comic relief to a story that paralleled the similarities between an addict and an actor. Both need motivation to play a role to entice an audience to deliver what is needed. Zach, the younger brother, sits on the stage as these film clips are shown, and occasionally breaks into monologue, reciting letters that Gator wrote to him from prison, in the character of Jean Claude.

I feel the layering added the right amount of depth to this show, although at times it also added a repetitiveness that was tedious to listen to again. The best part was definitely the splicing of the movie clips. Van Dam's acting is ridiculous on its own, but having the parodies cut in heightened this ridiculousness.

The show's running time is about an hour and having some former knowledge of JCVD is helpful in understanding some of Zach's onstage mannerisms.


As a side note, my boyfriend, who wasn't into the arts scene when we met, was the one last night suggesting shows at the opera, the symphony and theatrical productions that we should see. This makes me Tacquito happy. :)