Activists and
accusations

English theatre gets serious with Speak
Truth to Power and Letter Two/Lettre nº2

FROM BEYOND THE DARK: (l to r) Nina Marie
Mills, The Man and Saro Saroyan

by NEIL BOYCE

I’m asking Bruce Lambie, artistic director of Scotch and Cookies Theatre, about authenticity, and what it means to him: “It’s being honest about what the words are and how they affect you, and not being afraid to show that.”?

Along with company co-founders Alison Louder and Jason McCullough, Lambie is readying Ariel Dorfman’s hard-hitting play, Speak Truth to Power: Voices From Beyond the Dark, and being truthful is foremost on his mind.

The work, staged in Montreal for the first time, chronicles in 50 stories the experiences of activists, human rights workers, and victims of abuse from around the world.

Based on a book by Kerry Kennedy (subtitled Human Rights Defenders Who are Changing Our World), Dorfman’s play is a succession of arresting monologues about abuses witnessed and experienced: Egyptian police push an activist through a window, scarring his face; a seven-year-old is sold into slavery in Ghana; a woman starts the first domestic violence hotline in Russia; a lawyer in Turkey confronts people involved in torture.

A cast of 10 Montreal actors tell the stories. “The really important thing,” says Lambie, “was to make sure everyone could present it honestly—it’s not a play that benefits from illusion. The more straightforward the story the actor can put forth, the better. It needs to be very down to earth.”

?“It’s a message of hope,” Lambie concludes. “A play like this could be very sombre and depressing, but it isn’t. It comes across as very powerful and empowering. The message is: despite all this darkness and all these terrible odds, we can succeed, there are things we can do, and all is not lost.”?

ROASTING THE STAGE

?“If we took a match to theatre in Canada, if we burned it down, I don’t think people in this country would miss it.”?

But tell me what you really think, Tony Nardi, don’t hold back...

An actor, writer and producer, Nardi has been nominated for and won both Genie and Dora award. But it’s his newest work, Letter Two/Lettre nº2, that’s generating the most ink. In a developing series entitled Two Letters… And Counting!, Nardi’s the angry man shaking his fist at the Canadian artistic community, saying no to everything that smacks of theatrical cliché. There’s no stage, no costumes, no character, no director, no stage manager, no makeup and no curtain call afterward.

?“It’s just basically me there with a laptop doing the piece,” says Nardi.

Created from some incendiary letters Nardi wrote to a TV producer and two theatre critics in which he attacked the “complacency, mediocrity and inauthenticity” of the Canadian stage and screen, it evolved into a series of public readings, finding, he says, its dramatic template and central theme: a lily-livered-ness about speaking out in this country for fear of harm to ones job and reputation.

Nardi’s already upset many who thought they were off the record when they shared their unguarded thoughts with him, but he’s defiant about it: “Look, if I burned a bridge, then that bridge was not worth taking.”

SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER TO AUG. 30,
8 P.M. SAINT GEORGE’S ANGLICAN
CHURCH (1101 STANLEY) TICKETS AND
INFO: (514) 756-8951 OR
SCOTCHNCOOKIES@GMAIL.COM
LETTER TWO/LETTRE Nº2 AUG. 31,
SEPT. 2, 4 AND 5, 7 P.M. AT ESPACE
LIBRE (1945 FULLUM)
EACH PRESENTATION IS FOLLOWED
BY A DISCUSSION WITH A
MODERATOR. TICKETS: (514) 521-4191