Aaron Kahn

YOU are contributing to finance the development phase of an all new world premiere theatrical adaptation of Leonard Cohen's catastrophic 1966 novel Beautiful Losers.



At the centre of the story are the members of a love triangle, united by their obsessions and fascination with a 17th century Mohawk, blessed Kateri Tekakwitha. The triangle consists of the unnamed narrator, an authority on the vanishing A------ tribe, his wife Edith, one of the last surviving members of the tribe, and their maniacal and domineering friend, F, who may or may not exist. Time is non-linear and oscillates frequently between 20th and 17th century Quebec.

The text is by turns coarse, rhapsodic and bitingly witty, as it explores the particular brand of self-abandonment each character adopts, whereby the sensualist becomes indistinguishable from the saint. The reader is forced to question the fidelity of everything in the search for absolute truth — orgiastic sexuality, Montreal politics, memory, history, religion and going to the movies. It is all part of an ordinary eternal machine hurtling towards a most remarkable transformation. Beautiful Losers is considered a classic of Canadian literature.

 
                             

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT:

Beautiful Losers is offensive!
It uses our defenses for its own purposes.

Beautiful Losers is controversial!
It uses controversy as a smokescreen to demonstrate its point.

Beautiful Losers is psychedelic!
It uses the mechanisms in our brains triggered by pop culture references to psychedelia with the aim of prying open the mind widely (and wildly) enough to accept non-linear and untraditional narrative structures.

Eventually the elasticity of our consciousness is pushed to accept porous structures of time and space. Ultimately the very boundaries between characters are blurred, congealing the spectator to comprehend the simplex philosophical concept of non-dualism.

The “story” its “plot” and “characters” are not the point. Where the experience delivers the audience is the point: a state of deliriously shaken consciousness characterized mostly by grief and longing, spuriously manifest in sex and other domination games played out by friends, lovers, church, state, id, ego, superego, and all that is not nature itself.

Our adaptation, like the novel, brings the audience to the center of action. A mythical place within the mystery where a remarkable, unnamable transformation occurs. It shows how meditation works to implode or explode any subject or object.

The 17th century Iroquois virgin (now a canonized saint) Kateri Tekakwitha is the lens, the tool, the talisman, the prism of this experience. She is the object of Cohen’s and the characters’ concentration. It is through her that the proof is born. The 20th century characters unrelenting obsession with Tekakwitha, miracles, sex, and death reveal a beautiful knowledge of unity.




A Swedish edition of the novel featuring a depiction of Kateri Tekakwitha on the cover



SCENOGRAPHER'S STATEMENT:

We are developing a unique and ambitious spatial concept for the project. We aim to combine three of the main centers of action of the story:

— an Iroquois longhouse (the traditional dwelling of central character, Catherine Tekakwitha)
— The System Theatre (a 60's era cinema on Ste. Catherine Street in Montreal)
— The Main Shooting and Game Alley (an 60's era amusement arcade on St. Lawrence Boulevard in Montreal)

We intend to elevate the spectator to illusory, psychedelic and historically obscured spaces of imagery and light. The ordinary eternal machinery is under construction...


An Iroquois longhouse (The traditional dwelling of central character, Catherine Tekakwitha)



The System Theatre (A cinema at 539 Ste. Catherine Street West in Montreal) 



The Main Shooting and Game Alley (an amusement arcade on St. Lawrence Boulevard in Montreal)



However, before the project can move forward we need to secure legal rights to present our adaptation. 

In order for this to happen lawyers, contracts, and money are required. I've got the lawyer: intellectual property specialist  Peter Irvine. He's ready to negotiate the contract. With your support we can put our affairs in order for this project, get the green light from Cohen, and get down to the business of theatre making.

Your donation at this stage constitutes the first kernel of our war chest so as to initiate the endeavor. These funds will be used to compensate the design phase, including finalizing the art direction and business plan. More precisely, donations will be used to surmount the fundamental obstacles that currently obstruct the development of the project. The steps to clear that path are:

1. Retaining intellectual property specialist attorney Peter Irvine to represent us in the pursuit of a license agreement. Mr. Irvine will negotiate and execute the agreement in concert with Cohen's attorneys Michelle Rice and Robert Kory. ($1100)

2. Covering costs related to creating drawings, models, and other visuals for the high quality treatment we will be sending to Cohen's team as a key component of our introductory first contact. Funds will also be used to pay for producing, reproducing, and sending the aforementioned treatment to Cohen. ($200)

3. An advance payment to the copyright holder as part of the agreement. ($3500)

4. Other related expenditures that will lead us from having a "project-in-development" to having a "project-in-pre-production" such as stage engineering consultants and future fundraising campaigns for actual production costs. ($400)

5. Fundraising fees incurred by service providers Pozible.com, PayPal.com, and Stripe.com ($580)

At this stage our primary obstacles are legal.

Later on there will be some engineering aspects related to the production design that may be challenging. After having secured the rights for the project, our next greatest challenges resemble the challenges we face in every production: 

Casting, marketing and PR, selling tickets, getting bookings in festivals, etc.

These challenges are exciting and stoke our creative juices. They are, in the end, all part of the process of bringing performances to life.