World in crisis

Playwright Colleen Wagner imagines the
collapse of civil society in Imago’s
Down From Heaven

INVOLUNTARY SECLUSION: Down From Heaven

by NEIL BOYCE

So here’s the scene: Imago Theatre had organized an informal gathering for media types at their rehearsal space, a “5 à 7” with the actors, director, tech and playwright Colleen Wagner, hot off the plane from Toronto with her new work, Down From Heaven.

This sort of thing is usually poison as far as writing anything original and non-formulaic goes: the press agent gives you a nicely organized kit with highlighted pull quotes and a ready-for-print story outline. Journalists are steered towards the cast and director for a brief conversation where they exchange clichés—and that’s that.

But once in a while, the setting is chill and unaffected; the people you meet are thoughtful and highly articulate and there’s a chance to communicate. Before Wagner embarks on a far-reaching trip crossing Rwanda, Uganda and South Africa, for research into a project about women and heroic mythology, we spoke about her recent work.

In her story, we’re in the near future. Following a pandemic, a food crisis and the rapid collapse of civil society. The advantages bestowed upon the upper classes are turned on their head and it’s survival of the fittest. Kept under quarantine in the basement of their own home, a wealthy family now relies on their former gardener for their lives. He’s enjoying the situation.

The idea came to Wagner in 2008 while visiting Rwanda for the first time to premiere her play, The Monument, which would win her the Governor General’s Award.

“The more the characters became clear to me,” she says, “the more I was aware that certain incidents and historical events were shaping it—like the SARS panic in 2003, and the way people responded to it; how Asian people were targeted as carriers, how if you coughed, you were like an enemy. And,” she adds, refering to Avian flu hysteria, “the mass slaughter of millions of birds that wiped out the livelihoods of farmers. Since 2001, we’re in a time of fear, where people are ready to give up their human rights for this feeling—false as it is—of a sense of security.”

“I love the way Colleen is able to skewer the strata of society while still loving them,” says director Alain Goulem. And in her writing, he’s found moments of levity in the darkness, recalling the exchanges of a different era between a famously dark playwright and his director. “I think Chekhov was always a bit pissed at Stanislavsky,” Goulem remarks with a grin. “He thought of his works as comedies.”

The play explores in particular the world of the working class—who in Wagner’s story are in positions of power—and the human condition in a time of crisis. “I think that’s when we come to know ourselves most profoundly. We discover who we are,” she says.

We’re sitting in the adjoining patio and Wagner gestures towards the building. “What if this place suddenly burst into flames? Do we grab the person who’s fallen and help them, or do we run? We’d find out who we are … and then, could we live with what we discover about ourselves?”

DOWN FROM HEAVEN AT MONUMENT
NATIONAL (1182 ST-LAURENT) SEPT.
24–OCT. 3. TICKETS: (514) 871-2224,
IMAGOTHEATRE.CA