>>PREVIEW
SOMETHING TRUE AND WONDERFUL
Runs until November 25
Lunchbox Theatre
Bow Valley Square
"Truth becomes a hazard, you know. Truth can become a liability."
So goes my discussion over the phone with Calgarian playwright Doug Curtis.
Telling the truth may be considered painful. It may destroy or repair a relationship. Yet, thinking of work and the people one encounters in a day, it isn’t hard to see how protocol can sometimes take over from someone saying how they truly feel.
Enter Lunchbox Theatre’s Something True and Wonderful, a new one-act play by Curtis.
"It’s about a guy named Steve, who has basically lied about everything all his life and a woman named Evelyn, who has sought out the best in everybody," says Curtis. "She’s been deceived, or rather, deceived herself most of her life when it comes to men, especially those who don’t tell the truth.
"So she runs into this man in a self-empowerment seminar and things just go wrong."
While two single people taking a course on self-improvement might lead to a beautiful relationship, it apparently has the potential to also be disastrous. Curtis explains his is more of a cautionary tale for those of us who might not communicate well with our romantic interests.
"It starts with getting each other’s names wrong at the very beginning," he says. "Steve lies about his employment – he pads his resumé from being a worker at Macintosh to being the owner of Macintosh. He gets himself further and further into trouble, because the more he says yes, the more Evelyn interprets this as a commitment to a long-term relationship."
While it seems like the script for Something True and Wonderful could snowball into the opposite of the play’s upbeat title, Curtis hopes audiences will get an appreciation of the complexity surrounding relationships.
"I do hope they get an appreciation of the lunacy of our relationships – how we go to lengths to hide the truth of who we are. I mean, you know there are hazards, there are protocols – a guy cannot just come up to a girl and say, ‘I like you, come to bed with me.’ That doesn’t happen. So there has to be foreplay, and foreplay has to occur intellectually, above the neckline."
But there may be hidden intentions.
"If he were really to play by the rules, wouldn’t he then start by lying? You’d really be dancing around the issue. That’s what the two of them do in the play – they dance around their intentions. Evelyn is honest with him, almost to a fault."
Curtis says the crux of the play deals with the state of character in being truthful.
"It has to do with the truth, even if the truth is delivered in bad or sobering terms. Ultimately, it’s a wonderful thing, because truth is the great leveller. It keeps us on our toes and keeps our hearts open." |
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