Publications - Pt. 2

A closer look into Clem Martini's various works.

Martini With a Twist
Similar to A Three Martini Lunch, Martini With a Twist contains five one-act plays, including some of Martini’s most well-known works. The oldest is the award-winning Life History of the African Elephant from 1989. African Elephant focuses on zany characters enclosed in an elephant habitat while touching on subjects like freedom versus captivity and the idea of fate.

Not only does the play feature a sharp script, it also calls for a fake elephant trunk on stage to be operated by a puppeteer. When Lunchbox Theatre staged the play in 2014, Martini reflected on the uniqueness of this stage trick. “You see its ears, its trunk, its head - but there were people who came up to me and actually believed  we had brought an elephant in,” (Hunt, 2014) said Martini during an interview with the Calgary Herald, "It's amazing what kind of illusion you can accomplish with that sort of slight [sic] of hand.” The Life History of the African Elephant has been praised by critics and even won the National Playwriting Competition.

Another one of Martini’s bizarre one-acts is Nobody of Consequence which involves a protagonist that amounts to nothing more than a talking severed head on stage while tackling grand issues like the purpose of life. It debuted at the same Lunchbox Theatre in 1990 and eventually won the Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award in 1995. Among the other plays in the collection are The Replacement, Spill and Spell and ''The Invention of Music. The Replacement is yet another piece that was originally produced by Lunchbox Theatre back in 2002 and is much simpler than the previous two plays in Martini With a Twist''. Similarly simple is Spill and Spell which adopts a childlike sense of playfulness within the narrative. It was first produced in 1994 by Nickel and Dime Productions at the University of Calgary. Finally Martini closes off the anthology with The Invention of Music in which the actors portray various kinds of whales on stage, imitating their movements and behaviours. This absurd yet ambitious show saw its first production in 2009, once again with Lunchbox Theatre. The Invention of Music explores themes of fitting in, fulfilling one’s duties and finding a path forward through life. It is also yet another play by Clem Martini with an emphasis on animals, drawing recollection to Conversations With My Neighbour’s Pit Bull and The Life History of the African Elephant. Later you will even read about a series of novels by Martini revolving around the life of crows.