Procession: The Unlearning

Created and directed by Ned Schantz and Jay Shea

Producer: Prof. Erin Hurley

Head Costume: Catherine Bradley

Production Manager: Huirui Zhang

Art Historian: Gwendolyn Owens

Research Assistants: Ariel Pickett and Adam Hill 

Procession: The Unlearning is set in 1954 as a prequel to Procession and moves backwards chronologically through Elena Chaussé’s fraught education at the fictional Canadian University. With the need to accommodate 60 guests per night and 30 student actors, this show became more like immersive theatre, with many more performances—both scripted and improvised—than the original show. The show takes over much of McGill’s Strathcona Anatomy and Dentistry Building, a remarkable “found set” that includes a beautiful central atrium, hidden staircases, creepy old rooms and elevators, and—tucked away in a private office—a landmark piece of Canadian art, Marian Dale Scott’s mural Endocrinology (1943). Like Procession, the prequel uses as much real history as possible until fictional supplementation becomes useful. Both shows are wheelchair accessible.

Guests arrive at Strathcona for intake, where the greeters are already in character as lab-coated scientists. Intake includes coat check and a waiver form. The form also identifies how receptive guests will be to more intimate “side quests,” which include a backroom experiment and a guided tour of the attic.

From intake guests proceed to reception in the adjoining room, which turns out to be the twenty-year reunion of the class of 1954. Actors play bartenders and pretend to recognize guests as they come in. Once all the guests arrive, the bartenders draw them into a circle dance. This dance becomes the evening’s first procession, down the hall and into a large, dark lecture hall. As atmospheric music plays, ushers show guests to their seats, on which they find graduation caps. A masked audience sits behind them in hand-drawn paper bags.

The university president introduces himself and welcomes them as the “graduating class of 1954.” A commencement ceremony unfolds, with speeches from the valedictorian and a commencement speaker, until the guests are asked to line up and complete the ceremony with a formal procession across the front of the room.

Exiting the hall, the guests see that the “diploma” they have received is in fact one of three class schedules (by now they may realize they’re going backwards in time) which divide them into three groups. For the next hour, the guests rotate through three repeating classroom modules.

The masked audience disperses and populates the space as university students—some remove their masks, while others lurk in the building’s many creepy places with masks on.

Class 1: Art History

Art History Class meets in Strathcona 1/53, the original office of Hans Selye (founder of the field of stress research) and location of Marian Dale Scott’s mural Endocrinology. An art historian teaches guests about the mural, inviting questions that planted students will answer if guests won’t. Halfway through the lecture, everything freezes, and two experimenters emerge from a door cut in the mural and select a guest to take behind the mural with them for an experiment. Soon after the art history lecture begins, the lights go out and Marian Dale Scott appears to speak poetically from the darkness on the primal themes of the mural.

Class 2: Psychology

Psychology Class meets in Strathcona 2/36, originally an anatomy theatre. Lester the Imposter leads the class under the name “Dr. Goffman,” adapting a lecture of Erving Goffman’s. A dunce sits in the front corner. During the lecture, a fidgety student distracts Lester. At the end of the lecture, Lester asks if anyone has questions. If no guest asks a question, the fidgety student and other planted actors ask prepared questions. After Q&A, the dunce rises and becomes the professor, thanking Lester and taking over the class with the announcement that Lester was impersonating professors across campus until she decided to make him her teaching assistant. The Professor gives an exam, which begins as a legitimate, period-specific psych exam but gradually turns into a surreal personality test. Students exchange tests for marking and get labelled “well-adjusted,” “treatable,” or “pathological.” The fidgety student fails the exam and gets escorted out of class by Lester.

Class 3: Anatomy

Anatomy Class takes place in Strathcona’s Anatomy Museum, where students are greeted by the triumphalist professor of anatomy Dr. Winifred Osler and her graduate student Natasha, who promotes the heretical theory of spinal catastrophism. Osler leads a tour that focuses on the Museum’s machines and architecture as magnificent extensions of the human body. Natasha slips in dissenting views. This class ends early with Osler encouraging the students to explore the building in their remaining time. Natasha leads a small group to a secret in the basement.

Throughout the three-class rotation, a group of actors engage guests as they pass between classes or during the exploration phase of Anatomy Class. These include an elevator operator, stationed at Strathcona’s cramped and slow original elevator, a mime, a pair of hall monitors, an attic tour guide (to lure people upstairs for a special performance), and Elena Chaussé herself, the elusive heroine of the piece. Elena moves through Strathcona in ways that give the guests chances to glimpse her without encountering her directly. If they spy her near the atrium, she performs a disappearing act.

After the three class modules are finished, all the guests converge in Strathcona 1/12 for a final drama class. After a thematic introduction, the drama teacher puts the class through a series of physical exercises to prepare them for the final procession. Teaching assistants demonstrate the exercises at the front of the class. Eventually the class forms two lines and exits the classroom for a final, double procession that begins as a march and slowly devolves into a lurching, sideways shuffle.

Procession 1 (wheelchair accommodated) exits the main door, turns left and left again up the ramp toward the atrium, moving to a two-beat chant “No-sce Te Ip-sum” (know thyself). At the atrium, a masked audience joins the chant from the level above. The procession circles the atrium three times, then heads back down the hallway and takes a right toward the modern elevator where a small group shave offs and takes the modern elevator down a floor. The rest head down the stairs and meet the elevator on the lower level. The procession reassembles and heads east hugging the right wall to avoid crossing the other procession.

Procession 2 exits the back door just as the first procession passes by, following them to the atrium but entering the circle in the other direction. They circle three times before heading down the adjacent spiral staircase. The masked audience unmasks and joins the second procession from the staircase above. On the lower level, the second procession heads left, then takes another left into the main hallway, hugging the left wall.

In the main hallway, the two procession lines pass familiar characters from the show—starting with the elevator operator, who repeatedly says: “going down,” and moving on to the university president and psych teacher, who repeatedly say: “wrong, do it again”. At the end of the hallway, the guests finally meet Elena Chaussé, who hands them an invitation to the afterparty.