Duo thrives on cabaret

TheChronicleHerald.ca – By Elissa Barnard

2boys.tv don?t believe drag and lip synch are low art forms.

The Montreal “transmedia” duo dip into both for their style of “epic, new media burlesque.” They are in town to perform Zona Pellucida, a 45-minute performance piece about art and life.

“We like to come up with these lofty titles for rather trashy, new media drag performances just to make us feel we?re serious artists,” says Lawson, laughing.

Lawson is the comical, stage performer of the duo. “He has a real undeniable urge to perform,” says Pollard, who is the more serious video artist with a master?s fine arts degree from Concordia University.

Both come from small cities, Dundas, Ont., for Lawson, who is a National Theatre School graduate, and Victoria, B.C., for Pollard. Both studied experimental, European-based theatre when they were young and both thrive on the cabaret, theatre and dance scene in Montreal.

In fact, it was in cabaret that they found their voice. When Pollard first came to Montreal he couldn?t find anything like the vibrant video art scene of the 1990s which he had loved for its international, socio-political milieu.