A half-hour excerpt of my new play, Turbulence, is getting an online reading at the University of Calgary on Sat. Feb. 27, 2021. The wonderful Clare Preuss is directing a cast of undergraduate students. You are welcome to sign up for a spot and join us.
Turbulence has had a turbulent history. A documentary play by the same name was commissioned ten years ago by Lighthouse Festival Theatre, the 4th Line Theatre, and the Blyth Festival, with the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. I then embarked on an epic quest to chronicle the roiling wind power controversy that redrew the political map of Ontario; created a grievance-driven rural protest movement (which led ultimately to the election of an anti-environmentalist right-wing populist to the premier’s office); and divided communities and even families.
I interviewed dozens and dozens and dozens of people, went to wind power conferences and Conservative party policy conferences, criss-crossed hundreds of miles, gathered thousands of documents, and created mountains of transcripts (including almost a hundred hours’ worth that, overwhelmed, I paid other actors to do for me). Seven different artistic directors have led the three original companies since I got that three-way commission… and I’ve had notes from all of them. I was later helped by the Banff Centre, Hedgebrook, and the Playwrights Theatre Centre, including brilliant dramaturgy by Kathleen Flaherty and Christine Sumption. So many people have thrown their support behind this piece over the years that it’s almost embarrassing.
Especially because the project was ultimately a failure.
It humbled me as a writer. It soured longstanding artistic relationships. As for the people I interviewed for the piece over a two or three-year period: some of them were friendly, warm, and welcoming; others were so aggressively hostile, rage-filled, distrustful, and borderline menacing that I would come back to the theatre office white as a sheet and utterly drained. I transcribed so many hours of interviews – inefficient hunt-and-peck typist that I am – that I damaged nerves in my wrists. I won’t get into details on this, but one particular draft caused me to be dumped by my best friend.
It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that I have PTSD about this project. The minute I open those transcripts, books, or articles, my back seizes up, my heart pounds, my ears ring, and my hands hurt.
I should probably have taken a hint from the universe that it was time to move on. The brilliant Marcus Youssef even told me at one point: “You know, there’s no shame in quitting.” And he’s right. However, if I’ve survived this long in the theatre, it is primarily because I am stubborn as fuck. And last year, as the pandemic was setting in and the Trump presidency was drawing to a shameful close, I had a flash of insight: I am not Annabel Soutar. I am not Anna Deavere Smith. I do not know how to make a doc play.
But I do know something about how to tell a story. So maybe I should just do that. Because, if I can get this right, it’s a hell of a story to tell.
And then I suddenly had an inspiration about how to tell it. In a way that felt like me. So I threw out everything I had written, stopped looking at the damn Google alerts, and started over.
This is just a first draft of this complete reimagining of my play, and I’m a long way from home. But thanks to my supervisor Clem Martini and everyone in my playwriting class; to Clare Preuss and her young cast; and to all the people who’ve believed in me, I am more determined than ever to get this script across the finish line… be it kicking and screaming, or singing and flying.