Since 1990, Theatre Projects Manitoba has built a reputation for cutting-edge theatre, producing original, daring and thought-provoking pieces year after year.

That trail-blazing tradition continues in the company's 20th-anniversary season with In the Chamber, Jan. 14 to 16.

The fifth instalment of TPM's new-work series features artists Gordon Tanner and Steven Ratzlaff. In August, TPM commissioned the two local performers - both fresh from acting in Manitoba Theatre Centre's It's a Wonderful Life - to write and perform their own pieces. Left to their own devices, Tanner and Ratzlaff thought it would be a good idea to share a starting point.

"They're pretty divergent pieces but I think the idea we started with is how it's interesting to examine how people respond when things really go wrong," says Ratzlaff, 53. "Whether it's in a hospital or an airplane, when things really go wrong, how do people respond to that and, more particularly, how do investigators look at what went wrong?"

With that common origin, the pair, with direction and dramaturgy by Sarah Constible, set to work on their separate stories. Ratzlaff's piece, Last Man in Puntarenas, is inspired by Murray Sinclair's Pediatric Cardiac Surgery Inquest Report, concerning the deaths of 12 infants at Health Sciences Centre in 1994, while Tanner's work, Last Man in Universe Alpha-11, deals with a far different disaster.

"It started with a hog-barn fire, the idea of an engineer investigating that, and it grew from there," says Tanner, 41, who actually holds an engineering degree. "With any kind of play, it starts out about one thing but it ends up something else, and the person involved in this investigation begins investigating himself. When you start out just with an idea and no preconceived notions about where you're going to go with it, you just follow paths and that's been really fascinating."

Up until this point, both men have worked mainly as actors, although Tanner has sketch-comedy writing experience as a member of the Royal Liechtenstein Theatre Company and Ratzlaff recently produced his first play, Dionysus in Stony Mountain, at last summer's Winnipeg Fringe Festival.

"I liked the experience of writing (Dionysus...) and performing in it, and collaborating in the rehearsal and workshop process," Ratzlaff says. "So when Ardith (Boxall, TPM artistic director) approached me to do this it seemed like a great opportunity to extend that experience."

"It's a vote of confidence to be asked to do it and it makes you want to step up," Tanner adds. "Writing is something I would like to pursue more. I've spent most of my time acting and I would like to spend more time writing."

It's not just the opportunity for writing work that Ratzlaff and Tanner appreciate; it's also TPM's very nature.

"You go to a TPM show and you don't know how to categorize it sometimes. They're open to surprise and that's what I like about it," Ratzlaff says. "Certainly the theatre company is more adventurous than most, because they commissioned and slotted two pieces they had no idea what would be. That takes an adventurous spirit."

It's that adventurous spirit Tanner thinks theatre-goers appreciate.

"There's this expectation that you have to do what people want to see in the theatre or it won't' succeed, but the flip side of that is people want to be surprised. People like to be surprised," he says.

IN THE CHAMBER
Theatre Projects Manitoba
Jan. 14-16, Rachel Browne Theatre