A Mystery Play, 2010

A Mystery Play is a project commissioned for Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, featuring a newly commissioned score by Michael G Mills, the Wyoming-born composer who has been a former composer-in-residence with both the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Deal Music Festival. The film installation was produced in Winnipeg as part of Plug-In’s annual Summer Institute in 2010.

For A Mystery Play, Dawood reprises his interest in Buster Keaton as well as his connection to Harry Houdini, via the Vaudeville Circuit of the 1920s, which coincidentally included Winnipeg, with both performers having performed at the Pantages Playhouse, which is still in use as the Playhouse Theatre. The new work was staged and filmed between the Playhouse, the Manitoba Legislative Building, the Winnipeg Zoo’s lion cage, and various outdoor locations. Drawing on research into the Masonic symbolism inherent in the Legislative Building, parallel ideas of magic, or visual sleight-of-hand encompassed in the work of both Keaton and Houdini, the film also maps out various other histories and narratives contained within Winnipeg and Canada. Historic figures are introduced, for example, Mademoiselle Adgie, the burlesque dancer who performed with lions for the opening gala of the Pantages Playhouse and Canadian magician, Dai Vernon, known as “the man who fooled Houdini”.