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The Oakville Beaver, Wednesday November 26, 2003 - C5 P e te r C . M c C u sk e r · O akville B eaver P e te r C . M c C u s k e r · O akville B eaver Filmmaker John Greyson and composer David Wall at the opening of their video opera Fig Trees The exhibition at Oakville Galleries at Centennial Square incorporates a widescreen television, at the Oakville Galleries. minivan and T-shirts. Viewers must visit two galleries for video opera (Continued from page C1) Later in Fig Trees, Achmat is approached by avant-garde writer Gertrude Stein and composer Virgil Thomson, whose 1930s opera Four Saints in Three Acts was both groundbreaking and largely meaning less. The opera however, became the muse for Greyson's Fig Trees. In Greyson's opera. Stein and Thomson want to make an opera about Achmat as a martyr and a saint, creating an opera within an opera. The subplots are the pieces of the puzzle most difficult to fit into the whole. Like Greyson's attempt to pay homage to Four Saints, his attempt to localize the material by bringing in a true story of racism in 1930s Oakville is difficult to comprehend during viewing. The story, of a white woman being taken from her black boyfriend's house by members of the Ku Klux Klan - which resulted in a $50 fine for only one member of the group - is an interesting, not to mention educational, addition to the story, but it is only recon ciled when thought about afterwards. One assumes the racism in that story is meant to make a point about the racism illustrated by the world's disregard of AIDS-ravaged Africa, primarily sub-Saharan African, but it could also have something to do with Four Saints in Three Acts , which had an all-black cast. As curator Mamie Fleming writes in the free program accompanying the show. "rather than simply spoon-feeding a narra tive to an audience, the creators delicately tease one out by using a variety of mod ernist techniques, borrowed from different disciplines. They play with language. They employ found texts, alphabet systems, games of chance, palindromes, reversals, inversions and repetitions." This makes Fig Trees anything, but a typical story, and one cannot expect to be led through it on a leash, as can be expect ed with most stories. Instead, each viewer leads him or herself around, physically and mentally, and, in fact, has a say in how they view the opera. The methods of this madness become most interesting at Centennial Gallery, where, upon entering, you are confronted to your left with one scene projected on the floor and another projected in front of a miriivan, set up like a personal drive-in the atre. Around the comer there is the sushi bar with televisions inside and a model train zipping past, carting pills. It is an immediate sensory overload, and the best advice is to stick with the libretto, following the opera through the gallery one scene at a time, at least for your first view ing. What is most quickly evident about this show is its scale. It is an enormous under taking, and, as Oakville Galleries director Francine Perinet said, it is the most ambi tious exhibition they have ever hosted. That should be enough to get people out to see the show, but besides the scale. Fig Trees is a pleasure to watch, to venture through, to take part in. Once you've gone through and put the pieces together, this show is satisfy ing and rewarding because it is somewhat challenging, not a 50-piece Dafly Duck affair you do with your children, but a 3D puzzle of the Eiffel Tower that consumes an entire weekend.. Fig Trees: A Video Opera is at Oakville Galleries at Centennial Square and in Gairloch Gardens until January 25. 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