The Red Horse Is Leaving

I was really impressed by Erika Batdorf's rooted, realistic performance as her artist mother in The Red Horse Is Leaving... I found Batdorf's character's journey from lucid theorizing, through mental health meltdown to a final act of creation, unique and unsensational.

J. Kelly Nestruck, Globe and Mail

Her interpretation of Whitten is that of a brilliant, charismatic speaker, a woman suffering from profound mental instability, and a relentlessly driven artist. That drive is physically made manifest on stage by the Gargoyle (a lithe Zoe Sweet), who stalks the studio's fringes when Whitten is coherent, knocks over art supplies when confronted by the painter, and wraps herself around the artist when Whitten's mood is erratic and unfocused.

Speaking of mood, there's some impressive technology on display here, as the Gargoyle wears a back piece and tail that changes colour and flashes based in part on biometric information received from sensors concealed in Batdorf's costume. So when Whitten is agitated, or calm, the colours and flashes of the Gargoyle's "aura" change.

But the show, of course, hinges on Batdorf's performance, and it's a praiseworthy tribute to an artist by her talented progeny. Batdorf's Whitten engages the audience directly at times, and at others, trails into scarcely audible muttering as she paces her studio, trying to break through her barriers to productivity. She's both an admirable and pitiable protagonist.

NOW Magazine / NNNN

Thaya Whitten, the subject of The Red Horse Is Leaving in the 2018 SummerWorks Performance Festival, was clearly a woman ahead of her time. The performance of her character, drawn heavily from her own writing and speaking engagements, is full of chewy, delicious ideas about art, commerce, relationships, colour, light, music, and fear. Whitten, who convened panel discussion and drew them live, who engaged people about their deep feelings and expectations around artwork, is utterly fascinating.

She’s played in this work by her daughter, Erika Batdorf (who also wrote the show), with an eye for detail that only love – however complicated – could produce, and Batdorf brings Whitten to life in the most exceptional way. She’s not just reproducing mannerisms, the acting here is almost transformational; she’s almost channelling Whitten as much as portraying her as she swings wildly between lucidity/present orientation and a world of visions that’s compelling and terrifying in equal measure. I could have watched Batdorf speak and paint and smoke and cower as her mother for another hour with no difficulty at all, and I imagine there was a lot more she could have said.

One of the best and most powerful quotes of the show for me, a concept to which Whitten returns repeatedly in the work, is that an artist is “in service to an unseen kingdom.” I loved this idea in every way… Sweet was very focused and powerful in her work…

Mooney on Theatre

Art, madness, longing & inspiration in the visceral, cerebral, deeply moving The Red Horse is Leaving

… the piece takes us on a thoughtful, moving journey into the playful, pensive and tormented mind of Batdorf’s performance artist/painter mother.

Cerebral and visceral at the same time, The Red Horse is Leaving also addresses the issues of meaning, ethics, outreach and economics as they relate to art; and the changing landscape of art and artists, and how their work is perceived and received.

Beautiful performances from Sweet and Batdorf in this profoundly moving, thought-provoking two-hander. Batdorf’s Thaya is an artist with a curious, sharp and tormented mind; and a playful, tortured soul. Longing for inspiration and connection with her muse and her work, as well as her audience, Sweet is both menacing and adorable as the Gargoyle; moving with precision and grace under and over furniture, and coiling around the artist. Both bird-like and cat-like, it nudges and prods Thaya, offering brushes and even sharing a snack.

Inside Thaya’s secret heart, like her, we realize that longing can be a dangerous and unfulfilling thing.… With shouts to the design team for their work in bringing this multimedia vision to life…

Life with more cowbell

The Red Horse is Leaving may be the first stream-of-consciousness monologue to depict how an artist struggles to express an elusive artistic vision... What stamps it with genius is not simply Thaya Whitten’s singular artistic and spiritual identity, but Ms. Batdorf’s artistry that expresses the relationship between genius and madness with haunting vividness and sympathetic understanding..…

… for the most creative of us (as Ms. Batdorf articulates) are destined to be “lovers of longing.” One of the extraordinary achievements of this solo piece is its vivid ability to make this longing a thing of spiritual radiance.

Keith Garebian, Stage and Page

There is nothing embarrassing about this audience participation; Batdorf is an underplayer, and the attitude she presents — firm in her ideas, diffident in their presentation — makes everyone feel at ease. [Batdorf is]… stabbing and unadorned.

One section of this show, sympathetically directed by Todd Hammond, bleeds imperceptibly into the next, and it seems that suddenly we are back in the studio, watching and hearing a verbalized elaboration of the opening silent sequence. This is a loving portrait, and both she and the audience are nourished by that fact, but it's an objective and unsentimental one.

Robert Cushman, National Post

The Red Horse Is Leaving opens with a single scene of magnificent control, … [it's] an absolute marvel: a pitch-perfectly timed symphony of coffee slurps, pill-pops and cigarette drags, as the artist contemplates a terminally blank canvas before her. It’s a wonderfully sustained piece of tragic-comic acting.

Paul Issacs, EYE Weekly