On the supremacy of white rodents
White Mice sets traps for smug audiences as it exposes the racism amongst us
THEATRE PREVIEW
WHITE MICE
Mammalian Diving Reflex
High Performance Rodeo
January 23 to 26
Engineered Air Theatre
It may be couched in comedy, but there’s nothing lighthearted at the core of White Mice, written and directed by Darren O’Donnell. It comes to the High Performance Rodeo after a series of successful runs in Toronto, where it was nominated for several Dora Mavor Moore awards before setting out on tour.
"It’s a show that takes a look at the white supremacist origins of Canada, and also just the white supremacist nature of Canada as it is now, and how that’s much more prevalent than is popularly thought, or at least within mainstream discourse," says O'Donnell.
He sees a paradox in the systemic racism inherent in what is touted internationally as a vigorously multicultural nation, and says most Canadians are unaware that the problem even exists.
"There (were) isolated incidents of white supremacy with Hindu temples being torched right after September 11," he says, "and people tend to see racism on that level a little bit more than in terms of the way it pervades systemically everywhere, and how for many people, it’s a day-to-day kind of occurence."
As people who have previously been blinded to the truth become aware of the world around them, the playwright says it’s a natural source of drama and comedy.
"It’s about this realization, from the perspective of a couple of characters who kind of have been living their happy, blissful existence up to that point," he explains. "When they start to realize that, it starts to change the way they view themselves in relation to everybody else."
In this case, the characters are two white mice, one of whom starts to realize that they are unwittingly taking part in a grand racist plan. His task is to tell his complacent friend the truth about mice of other colours. O’Donnell (who performed with Daniel MacIvor in last year’s In On It at the Rodeo) performs the play with former Calgarian Bruce Hunter. White Mice is most often described as a comedy, a label that seems incongruous with its serious message.
"The fundamentals of the argument are actually really, really simple, and hilariously obvious, and particularly the blindness that most people have to these things is actually really funny, because it’s just born on a willful ignorance," O’Donnell says. "Willful ignorance is kind of funny – stupid people are kind of funny – and when people who are willfully ignorant are revealed as such, it can be kind of funny."
There’s nothing funny about the national and international situation that gave rise to the play, however, and the playwright is determined that the message get through.
"It’s very important for capitalism to have cheap labour. And it’s easier to figure out who’s going to do the cheap labour if we decide that it’s based on race and ethnicity," he argues. "In Canada, as different waves of immigrants have come over here, they’ve not been considered white. Irish people, Ukrainian people, Italian people have not been considered white, and they’ve had to do their time as cheap and expendable labour. And then they get to become a member of ‘club white.’"
That assimilation can only go on for so long, he argues, and certain ethnic groups won’t ever "graduate" to a position where they can in turn oppress others. He doesn’t have a solution to the global economic problem, but says that it rests on governments taking more of a role in regulating business, not less. He’d like to see the Rodeo audience driven to action by his play. He worries, though, that it’s really nothing more than a panacea.
"Coming to see the show probably provides some relief or allows some pressure to escape, but it will also provide the sort of illusion that people are doing a good thing because they’re partaking in this information," he says.
"It can’t stop there, but it usually does stop there. We all congratulate ourselves on being part of this event, because it’s so progressive, but yet nothing gets done beyond it, so I’m just concerned that it can be just a diversionary thing sometimes, more than leading to action." |
