>>PREVIEW
THIS IS FOR YOU, ANNA
Runs until March 10
Downstage Performance Society
Motel (Epcor Centre)
It’s the true story of a child-murderer, a woman with a history of sexual abuse and a gunshot that avenged the death of her daughter. There are certainly easier gateways into directing than an abstracted piece about violence, sexual abuse and revenge, but in choosing to direct the Downstage Performance Society’s production of This is For You, Anna, Liz Kirkland has bypassed them all.
Created in response to the shooting of Klaus Grabowski during his trial for the murder of Marianne Bachmeier’s daughter, Anna, This is For You, Anna takes the form of non-linear scenes usually delivered by various aspects of Marianne, a character dispersed among the production’s five cast members. Created by a collective ensemble including Ann-Marie MacDonald, Banuta Rubess, Maureen White, Aida Jordao and Patricia Nichols, the play premiered in 1985 at Toronto’s Nightwood Theatre, with later productions occasionally receiving mixed reviews.
Weaving fairy tale-style reminiscences with allusions to the rape of Lucretia and other sexual traumas, the play is a clear fit with Downstage’s socially conscious mandate, but also offers few of the traditional hooks of a linear story. Despite being Kirkland’s first stint as a director, the University of Calgary-trained actor feels confident that her existing experience is a good match for the moment-by-moment esthetic of the play.
"This is an exploration of the human condition, as opposed to a linear story, so it’s not terribly separate from the work I like to do as an actor," she says. "So the transition into working on a piece hasn’t been as difficult."
The piece has the added challenge of being collectively created and performed by a group of women intimately connected to the final result. Producing the play 12 years after its premiere, Downstage is separating The Anna Collective, as the five women dubbed themselves, from their original context and replacing them with Christina Parker, Stephanie Morris, Suzan Hatala and Tanya Heschl. Even in a play loaded with symbolism and the abstract, Kirkland and her all-female cast and crew have been able to find their personal connections to the piece.
"I’ve had to explore all of that and figure out what that means for me and what it means for the six of us, including the stage manager," she says. "We’ve had to make it personal. As well, I’ve come to realize that it might have been they who created it, but it’s a piece that anyone will relate to. Every woman will have a friend or a family member or themselves who has gone through a situation like this."
Certainly, the play is intimately concerned with a shocking act of violence on a vulnerable child, Bachmeier’s own history of abusive men and the equally shocking climax of her revenge. Woven into the play’s fundamental concern with sexual inequality (men kill, women kill themselves), violence is an essential element of the play. But when asked if Anna itself is about violence, Kirkland is hesitant to say that it drives the play.
"It is and it isn’t," she says. "It revolves around a violent act, what Claus did to Anna and Marianne’s revenge, which were violent acts. But I think in the bigger picture, I don’t think that violence is the core to this piece. It’s something that sits around the outside, definitely a part of it.
"If you want to go really basic, down to a very deep level, every human being is in a constant search for love and attention," she adds. "Claus sought that out with Anna. Marianne sought it out in the men that she was with and with her daughter. I think that search for love and attention led them to the actions that they took."
Addressing weighty questions of love, revenge and sexual violence, This is For You, Anna will certainly offer its audiences the same challenge it poses to its cast and crew, touching on visceral emotion and existential questions. But if its first-time director is daunted by the challenge, she doesn’t show it, asking, "I guess if I’m going to dive into it then why not into something that has the potential to be so much?" |
Copyright ©2007 FFWD. All rights reserved.