By Hamutal Dotan

Photo courtesy of SummerWorks.

Montparnasse is the name of an area of Paris (Left Bank, 14th arrondissement, named after Mount Parnassus) and also the name of a certain bit of Parisian mythology (early 20th-century epicentre of artistic productivity and site of correspondingly legendary bacchanalia). Montparnasse is the play at SummerWorks that explores these intersecting worlds, examining what it might take to make your way through them in both the practical and mythological senses. Co-authored and co-performed by SummerWorks veterans Maev Beaty and Erin Shields, Montparnasse tells the story of two American ex-pats, one diving headlong into the revelry and one pursuing the loftiest of artistic aspirations, both working as nude models to make ends meet all the while.
The play, cleverly, starts with two stock characters—the libertine and the prude—and slowly undermines the presumptions we have about each. The prude, it turns out, is willing to take bigger risks with her emotions and her sexuality, and the libertine’s apparent independence is tempered by a desperate need for approval. Montparnasse uses nudity, and each character’s relationship to it, as a lens through which to examine their unfolding characters, and thus manages to successfully recreate the artist-model relationship in the theatre: we in the audience take on the role of artist, examining figures who are literally and figuratively naked with the kind of observational eye a painter does in the studio, rather than engaging with them—as you might expect with two women parading up and down a stage naked for the better part of an hour—as sexual objects. It’s an accomplishment due a little more to the duo’s heartfelt performances than to their script (which shines in moments but can be stilted in others), and it’s no small feat. Nakedness, it turns out, is both a bigger and smaller deal than it first seems.
The last performance of Montparnasse is tomorrow at 2:30 p.m.
SummerWorks runs until August 16 at various locations around the city. Check back for Torontoist’s daily coverage throughout the festival.