Tim Nguyen

From Habitat

More than any other Canadian city, Calgary is notorious for its socio-economic tunnel vision. The downtown core is designed around the pinstriped young professional workforce, and little consideration is given to the enormous homeless problem, save for the Calgary Downtown Association’s fixation on its esthetic detriment. Between 1997 and 1999, Calgary’s once privatized child services program was rolled into a “community board” system that, while addressing the unwieldy management of contractors by the provincial government, has arguably introduced an even more unwieldy local bureaucracy that offers fewer care programs.

Downstage Theatre, dedicated to producing socially aware shows, has chosen Habitat by Judith Thompson as its last production this season. Though the play doesn’t directly discuss Calgary’s issues — Thompson is from Ontario — its themes still resonate with the dollar-eyed Calgarian zeitgeist. The story follows Rain, a youth who loses her mother to cancer and is forced to live in a group home that is facing resistance from the affluent community it’s in. Disconnected from her emotions, Rain’s experiences in the group home, the community and with the politics of the municipality, force her to rediscover herself and her political will.

“Habitat really is a great story — it goes beyond the social issue,” says Simon Mallet, Downstage’s artistic producer and director of the show. “[The social issues are] certainly in there, but there are questions of growing up and coming of age and stuff like that. There are some really personal and deeply human stories that are being told against the backdrop of a larger social struggle.”

Years after being exposed to the play during a class with Thompson at the University of Guelph, Mallet found that the show fit perfectly with his company’s mandate. It was Thompson’s approach to a complex issue that caused Mallet to mentally earmark the show for a Downstage production.

“I think one of the great things about the script is the way that it engages with political and social issues — that it doesn’t pretend to have all the answers, and it doesn’t provide an easy solution,” says Mallet. “There’s no chastising of any one side of the argument. One of the great things about Habitat is that all of the characters have claims that support their arguments, and they all have flaws that illustrate that there really is no ideal solution.”

One of the real-life events that Mallet says prompted the production was the rejection of the Sunalta halfway house last year. The city was attempting to put a house for paroled criminals in the Sunalta-Scarborough community, but the proposal was rejected due to negative community reaction. Ward 8 Ald. John Mar, a former RCMP officer and head of the community board that resisted the proposal, succinctly summarized the Catch 22 of the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) argument in an interview with CBC early last year:

“Halfway houses are obviously extremely important and provide an essential service to the city as a greater whole,” he said. “However, we were opposed to it due to the location and proximity to schools and to the emerging immigrant population in the area.”

Unfortunately, if no one makes room for important social institutions in their communities, there simply isn’t anywhere left to put them. The solution, some think, is to convince people that the institutions are an important part of a healthy community. With Downstage’s socially charged approach to theatre, it’s these perceptions that Mallet hopes to challenge.

“Habitat has been on my list of plays that I’ve really wanted to do for a really long time,” says Mallet. “It’s beautifully written and explores some provocative questions, certainly with the increase in housing questions and the increasing division of wealth in Calgary. It seemed to be the right time to produce the script in this city.”