The One: a collaboration is a performance that addresses issues of control, power, social dynamics and the ritual of routine. Using the social mirror as a means to examine how we see ourselves and how others perceive us to be, The One: a collaboration exploits audience expectations just when the audience thinks they have it all figured out.

Jackie Gallant is a female everyman- a sympathetic character playing the part of herself. She gets out of bed in response to an instructional voice, acting and reacting to its directions, quoting the routine of the everyday without verbal response. Dayna McLeod is this pervasive voice- questioning and directing Gallant like a conscience, bully or authority figure.

Sending Gallant into the audience first to introduce herself and shake hands (twice) with the first row of the audience, and then to ask an audience member whom she fancies out on a date, McLeod implicates the audience in the performative transaction and increases their sympathy for Gallant. The relationship that Gallant has with the audience becomes embarrassingly sexualized- creating an awkward tension that personalizes the power structure between Gallant and McLeod, and extends it to the audience. With the audience now acting as participants in this bizarre relationship, a weird sense of awkwardness is maintained until the date is made. Gallant then makes her exit under McLeod’s verbal guidance, and McLeod takes Gallant’s place in the bed and the lights go out.

Performed at:
2004: The Edgy Women Festival, Studio 303, Montreal