ZUPPA THEATRE

Ode to love pops up on Zoom

Shakespeare declared music was the food of love, but for Zuppa Theatre Co., it was sushi. At least that’s how it started, when the Halifax troupe first gathered at the home of co-artistic director Alex Mclean in 2014 to discuss adapting Plato’s Symposium on the nature of Eros into a new play.

With a large platter of maki and sashimi, and plenty of drinks to wash it down, they began wrestling with the great Greek’s 2,400-year-old philosophy on beauty and desire to make it more palatable for a modern audience in the form of the Pop-up Love Party.

“We read the whole thing from cover to cover, and kind of recreated the whole experience for real,” says co-artistic director Ben Stone, who rejoins his cast mates Saturday in a new online reconfiguring of a show previously enjoyed by intimate crowds plied with gourmet food and beverages.

“It just felt like a good evening, in that way, knowing that people wouldn’t want to listen to whichever stodgy academic did the translation. We just thought we could write it in our own words and it would be good, as a drunken evening.”

After its debut at Magnetic North Theatre Festival, Zuppa Theatre took the PopUp Love Party to a variety of different venues — including a memorable 2015 run at the erstwhile Halifax bistro Lion & Bright — accompanied by a menu designed by Halifaxraised, Brooklyn-based chef Daniel Burns and brought to life by FID’S Daniel Johnston.

Between and during courses, Zuppa members Stone, Stewart Legere and Susan Leblanc would deliver their own versions of the Symposium speeches in praise of love by characters like Phaedrus the aristocrat, Aristophanes the comic playwright and Socrates the philosopher. They’d tackle the idea of love in all its pure devotion, honorable duty and earthy ribaldry.

These days, up-close-andpersonal gatherings like the Pop-up Love Party are off the table for the time being. But since we could all use a little more love in our lives, the gang is getting back together — including castmember-turned-nova Scotia MLA Leblanc — to refresh our memories of how l’amour keeps us going and keeps us linked together even when current circumstances keep us apart.

“It’s one of the only stories there is worth talking about: love and connection,” says

Legere of the Symposium’s ideas in the grand scheme of things. “In some ways everything else, all the other stories, are somehow related to that.

“It’s a thing that’s kind of universal. Or each person has their own version of what it is. Everybody has a story about connection, or lack of connection. Looking for love or having love or losing love, or wondering what about you is going to be eternal. They are the big questions.”

For the Zoom version of Pop-up Love Party, there won’t be a chef dropping by with an exquisite tasting menu, although chef Johnston has come up with some cocktails viewers can make at home, and there won’t be any wrestling.

But the format of Zoom will allow for some of the interactivity of the original show, and because it will be live there is still a high degree of spontaneity to the experience, as Zuppa discovered when they did a test run for students at University of King’s College.

“We still get to talk to each other, for real, and that’s fun. And we still get to talk to the audience, for real, and that’s fun. We still get to do the original piece, which has a dramatic arc and surprises,” says Stone, who enjoyed playing around with the conventions of Zoom conferencing that have become so familiar over the past year.

“In the bar, we hoped to make people relaxed and comfortable, just hanging out with friends sitting around a table. Chatting and listening to music, and it wasn’t a precious theatrical space.

“When we did it for King’s (on Zoom), there were groups of kids in their dorm rooms watching it and having drinks, so the same vibe is still possible to achieve.”

Tickets for Zuppa Theatre Co.’s Pop-up Love Party, on Saturday at 9 p.m., are pay-what-you-can at zuppatheatre.com.