Attawapiskat

Dear Friends,

Sorry about the delay, I find this task daunting... Here goes nothing!

While I am currently sitting in my parents' house surrounded by newspapers, pots of coffee and all the fresh fruits and vegetables my simple little heart desires, that is not how I spent my summer. To be honest I find it quite difficult to think about how to properly write about and convey my time up in Attawapiskat. There just seems to be so much I could write about it, the summer was challenging but easy and also sad but hilarious. At the end of camp I was exhausted and burnt out, but since leaving the north I miss the stray dogs, the expansive skies, the sense of community, the river outside my window and most of all the kids.

Attawapiskat has a population of about 1800 and is located just off the western coast of James Bay. The town is built right on the river bank and hunting, fishing and camping are very important to the people in the community. I got to go camping with my co-workers family and to watch her mother skin a polar bear! (I have a lot of photos if you are curious and not squeamish). There are many large canoes pulled up on the bank, and from what one of the kids told me I believe they are shared between the community, or least between some families. In terms of infrastructure there is a Northern store (which had a Pizza Hut/ KFC take-away counter, and at times even had avocadoes in stock, 6$ avocadoes that is...), a couple candy stores (kids ate SO much candy, and they have so many rotten teeth!), a coffee shop, a few convenience stores, a hospital (sans doctors), a health centre, a social services office, a community hall (for the super popular BINGO), one playground and a high school. Elementary school has been operated out of portables for the last 10 years, but after years of lobbying the government has only just given word that the community will indeed get a new elementary school built (there were no signs of any work getting done this summer).

Camp itself was pretty crazy. As for the 'literacy' aspect of camp... We tried, but it is damn near impossible to make kids read and write (especially the older ones) when they are coming to camp of their own free will and can and do walk out if they don't like the activity. It was more important to us to make kids want to come to camp so that they could benefit from healthy snacks and socialization than to be sure every kid read for 15 minutes a day. It was also challenging when some kids could not read or write at all to do a creative writing project. We did have success reading with the younger kids (especially when my special friend Puppeta McSock read to them) and loaning out books for children to take home. Whenever possible we threw the alphabet or new words into activities. We definitely didn't have the staff to manage the amount of kids who came to camp the first 2 weeks (50 kids in the morning and 30 in the afternoon with 4 of us, sometimes only 3). Teasing and bullying is out of control and the numbers dropped pretty drastically in the middle of the summer. Smaller numbers meant we could give kids more attention and do more cool stuff, but it also means that there are kids who are missing out, often those for whom the teasing was too much to handle. The kids didn't even just tease each other, we were fair game for them as well. Those 'spots' on my face were a constant source of amusement. One of my coworkers was black and it was much worse and more serious for her. We had a tough time trying to teach the kids the irony of them calling her racist names and treating her differently because of her skin colour. The whole situation led to some pretty interesting discussions with some of the older campers, but it was quite a challenge getting through to the kids about racism, and also not something I have ever had to deal with before in my life, neither had my co-worker who had grown up in multicultural neighbourhoods in Montreal and Toronto.

I've worked with kids before, but the behaviour of many of these kids was just wild in comparison. It happened regularly at camp or our events that objects were thrown, food, dominos, markers, rocks, chairs, even once a table (thrown into the ditch, thankfully not at anyone). We had to call NAPS (the local police) twice, once when children were trying to break down the doors to our house and pulling at the broken glass on the windows (we did not have a phone, so we attempted on skype, but did not succeed, after about half an hour of being under siege some older kids came and scared off those attacking our house) and another time because a seven year old camper was throwing a temper tantrum after camp was over, refusing to leave the premises and climbing out onto high ledges threatening to jump off (we had called her family and half an hour later they had still not arrived). Both times we were worried more about the kids, but just didn't know who else in the community we could turn to, as frontier college did not bother to arrange a community liaison for us. I was never greatly worried about my own safety, but heartbroken many times by the behaviour of young kids, it just scared me to think what they would resort to as they grew older and stronger. It was expressed to me by elders and responsible community members that they have a huge problem with parenting (or lack thereof). Many of my campers parents were in their twenties, having children in your teens is quite common, and many children are being raised by extended families. I loved the sense of family and community that exists in Attawapiskat. Twice during my stay they held feasts in which the entire community is invited into the community space to come and eat. It was beautiful to see such sharing and generosity.

Despite all the mayhem I loved those crazy kids. I had the best interactions with them outside of camp. There were always kids knocking at our door. They wanted to go with us to the playground, for a swim, for a walk, to play uno or bananagrams on the porch or simply to hang out and talk. The only evening activity is dodgeball in the gym every night at 6 and children are often allowed to roam the town until late at night. It worked to my advantage that I advertised that kids could come knock on my door at ANY hour if the northern lights were out, and on two occasions they did. The second time we didn't actually have a door to knock on but the windows were open and I could hear "HEATHER HEATHER HEATHER" being yelled from the street. Not only were the lights dancing across the sky but I saw many shooting stars and the sky is so large and beautiful, no light pollution or skyscrapers in the way! We had some issues with housing, and the school board lied to us about having to do work in the house we were living in, and kicked us out when we had 2 weeks left in the community. The priest (who WAS the spitting of Mr. Rogers from the TV show, riding around town in his little cardigan on his bicycle) heard from the band council that we needed housing and offered us to move into the apartment in the church. Unfortunately there was no porch the kids could hang out on, and the outside doors were locked at 10 p.m. It definitely changed the dynamics that kids could no longer come by easily on evenings and weekends, but our camp numbers did go up and perhaps that had something to do with it.

I feel as if there is just too much to talk about, and I don't know if I have said even half of what I wanted to say, but ask me about it in person next time you see me. I will show you our funny camp video and tell you about my favourite kids. As for now I have a wisdom tooth to be extracted tomorrow morning and am spending time in Ottawa in the sun and catching up with friends, then soon it is back to Halifax! At times this summer I was incredibly homesick for Halifax and friends (especially the day I saw Emma's photos on facebook!), right now I must go get dressed and head off on my (mother's) bicycle to visit with Alyza, Erin and Natalie!

Love,

Heather

Jacob

“stairs are such a clever, whimsical whiteman sort of thing” (Thomson Highway, Kiss of the Fur Queen, 55).

Yo yo yo team!

It’s so pleasant to hear of all of your adventures, and I can’t wait to hear from those who have yet to write. I think this blog is already a successful idea! And I love having a due date, even though I’m sure I’ll never hit it.

At Ella’s request, my recent experiences come from the great dusty North, whose spirit has graced our nascent blog. Right now, I’m in Neskantaga, but the place I called home for three weeks, and of which I’d like to speak, is a semi-scorched peninsula which juts out into Wunnumin Lake. The reserve takes its name after the lake and houses no more than 700 people. But before you Haligonian, Torontonian, city folk, scoff and jeer at the deadening quiescence of such small towns, I beseech you to do as my fellow Northern counsellors and I have done: put down your cappuccinos, postpone your “soirees” at the theater, and remove those cosmopolitan lenses which blind you from the more modest, more humble, ways of existing. Then, perhaps, you can fathom something of what my Northern counsellors and I have experienced, albeit probably not ;)

Now as some of you know, my hypothesis going up North was that kids are kids despite race, credence, colour, and all those other identities which differentiate them from one another. Some of you might protest that this is not a hypothesis, but rather a tautology, and would never stand up in the courts of science since it cannot be verified or disproven by experience. But though it is the most auspicious hypothesis I ever could have made (eheheh), the meaning of the tautology, kids are kids, remained to be discovered. What would kids being kids look like? What is an example of kids neither behaving as Jews nor as First Nations, but as kids? And, reciprocally, what would be those defining, insurmountable differences between the little kinder from Camp Shalom and the awashish from Wunnumin Lake? Well, one of the barriers which I encountered, despite being assured that it had long since been broken, was language.

Like Pik, where Mark is staying, Wunnumin Lake is unique in that the children learn their native language, Oji-Cree, before learning English. In fact, they don’t even begin learning English until Grade Two! This is not to say that the little kids don’t know any English; they pick it up here and there at home. But even though we could communicate with them somewhat, it was an entirely different thing trying to run a literacy to camp with them. (Just to give one example, for about a week we had been teaching them the sounds of the letters of the alphabet and then asking them to sound them out, until it dawned upon us that their unwillingness to answer was due to the fact that they did not understand the meaning of the word “sound.”) On top of the language barrier, our Northern counsellor was friends with many of the parents who happened to have three year old children with F.A.S, and she insisted that they come to camp even though the recommended age is five. But despite all these hardships, the improvements among the children were striking(ly heart-warming).

Another thing I was not used to coming up so casually and frequently with the little Jewums from Camp Shalom was death. No doubt, working at camp for four years I had experienced one or two serious conversations about death or suicide, but it was precisely the solemn air which always coloured the atmosphere – which always made it familiar and navigable. If it did not have that solemnity, it was typically a kid stating a fact about the death of a relative who they never really knew, or a program concerning Jewish history in which death came off more as a statistic rather than a tragedy. In Wunnumin Lake, however, I was struck by kids speaking casually about the death of close friends and relatives, as if they were adults who had already passed through the stages of mourning, comfortable with death as fact of life and their loved ones as a memory. This hasn’t been any different in Neskantaga either.

Naturally, then, the expectations of my ears had to alter, but so too did the assumptions of my mouth. Asking kids where their parents were, to go get their parents, to tell their parents, always naively assumed a parent. I was not aware of my impertinence until one kid told me frankly that they had no parents. Since then, I’ve adopted the word guardian, though it does cause one or two children to raise their eyebrows in confusion.

So what, then, did show me something of the kid-ness of kids? Well, candy was something that Jewish bo-bos and First Nation awashish go bananas for. But rather than initiating communication with sugar (like the bible camp *cough* *cough*), I reached into my pocket and pulled out something I had long since forgotten: the high-five. O’ bless the high-five! What wise goddess hath sculpted our hands to only yield the sound of thunder when they join together?! She must have been to both lakes, Wunnumin and Muskoka, to know the need for a communion beyond the spurious sounds of words! And indeed, is there a more immediate recognition between two strangers than when they violently clash hands in perfect unison? Of course, with children, one’s resources would soon be drained if one solely relied on the simple high-five. They would slap your hand, revel in the moments pleasure, and soon be on their way, ready to slap any cursed hand they found. But by simply raising your hand higher, and then still higher, the kids will line up in droves, reaching with all their might for that satisfaction they felt, like Tantalus reaching for the fruit.

But enough about the children. Let me talk about reserve life in general. Absolutely mind blowing is the cost of food. Just to give one example, my co-counsellors and I decided to order the children a watermelon for snack. When the watermelon arrived, we discovered it was $41. $41!!! We toyed with the idea of having a countdown to watermelon day, but dropped it considering all food cost an exorbitant price anyway. But forget food. How much does a gram of weed cost?! (Don’t worry fellow counsellors, WE DIDN’T SMOKE ANY.) $50!!!!!! A 26 of Bacardi costs $300!!!!!! I know! These places need roads, yo! ;)

As for Wunnumin Lake in particular, we learned about a week into our stay that the community had been gravely affected in the early 80s by an Anglican Priest by the name of Ralph Rowe. Our Northern counsellor told us that Ralph Rowe had sexually abused most of the adult men when they were young. He had also sexually abused many of the men in Neskantaga and other communities in Northern Ontario. He was put on trial in Wunnumin Lake in 1994 and sentenced to six years of jail time, though he only wound up serving four. As far as I know, he has been convicted of further sex crimes, but they have not resulted in additional jail time. His sex crimes gave a lot of colour to the context of the community, as well as our presence. However, it did not inhibit me from participating in virtually every community event I could.

Within the first week, I was fortunate enough to join a hockey tournament and meet a lot of the fellas my age. Over the course of four days, my team of two girls and two other guys managed to come in 3rd place out of eight teams in an epic match that ended 21-20. Despite the joy of a modest victory, I had no idea we would playing full contact. My inner triumph was thus often joined by an external decrepitude, and followed by a warm, hot bath. The aches and pains of my body told me the other players had kept true to their word: they would not let the white guy off easy ;)

I was also fortunate to be in Wunnumin Lake for the week long, annual summer festival! Though in the past they’ve had the Dixie Chicks playing (WAH WAH!), it was still a merry old time. Virtually every family transformed their house into a hotel for people flying in from other reserves. The big attraction was the $50, 000 BINGO on the last night. But BINGO was hardly the only opportunity to win money; every event surrounded money. Whether you were running, canoeing, or participating in the slingshot competition, there was always a substantial cash prize. And for those who prefer family events, balloon drop, in which balloons filled with money were dropped from a cherry picker, succeeded in including the young as well as the old. (Although, there were some young casualties who were hurt in all the brouhaha. My co-counsellor, for one, suffered extensive scratches and bruises to her face and thighs at the hands of old Gogos and young miners. Many said the aerial drop, in which the money descends from a plane[!!!], is much better, albeit still violent)

I myself succeeded in leaving the festival with over $300, but hardly as a result of my own intentions. You see friends, an older woman approached me insisting that I participate in the Rock & Roll dance competition. Initially, I refused. The thought of dancing in front of the whole community was mortifying. But eventually, my co-counsellors, one of whom was a dancer, succumbed to her blandishments, and I was hard put to resist.

Hours before the dance I spent perfecting my routine out of nerve-racking anxiety. With the aid of dance step you-tube videos, I honed my footwork, sharpened my buttocks, and exercised my pelvic thrust to hip-breaking potential. I had no idea who the other dancers were, including the other four members of my team. The only thing I knew was that I would be competing against my two co-counsellors who happened to be placed on the same team. Fear mounted me like a dog, my friends, and I was a bitch in heat.

However, when we got to the dance floor right on time, which was about two hours before the dance actually began, we quickly realized that the other participants were either over 50, or intoxicated kids forced to dance by their parents. The rest of the kids our age were saving themselves up for the freestyle dance competition the next night. They considered Rock & Roll to be lame – but they had no idea just how lame it could be.

Feeling more confident in light of the competition, I flaunted the repertoire of dance moves I’d amassed in front of the computer screen. Between the “shuffle,” “the cowboy” (which I somewhat regret performing), and every Grease move I could remember, my team quickly ascended to the finals. Of course, the rest of my team contributed to our success. If it wasn’t for stomping Joe ( a nickname I gave him, which I don’t think he liked) or sizzling Suzie (she definitely didn’t like that nickname), we never would have made it. But low and behold, who else had made it to the finals? My co-staff. The dancer of the two busted out the splits, and my other co-counsellor finished with the “shake your tail feather.” Quickly recalling the lessons of my you-tube instructors, and mustering up all the courage I had, I descended to one knee and performed the “prayer” when all seemed lost. But it wasn’t enough to win. After long deliberation, the judges were undecided. They turned the competition into a two on two, calling from our team Joe and Suzie. Joe stomped like he’d never stomped before, and Suzie continued to sizzle, trying no harder, no less. Needless to say, we emerged victorious. And while I received a large sum of money, my dance moves lost me a lot of cred from the friends I’d earned. Nonetheless, our last night was a beautiful one.

With our three best friends, we stayed up till 5:30 in the morning and watched the sun rise. It was a wonderful end to a wonderful place. I'm happy to have been to Wunnumin Lake, and I'd be happy to be there again. Of course, there’s still much more to say, but I hope these words will fulfill something of your memory of me, as your words have stirred to life my memory of you.

With Love from the North,

Jacob

Cynthia

Hi everyone!

Greetings from Toronto, the hottest city on the planet. This is my first summer spent in a city—ever—and I have wisely chosen the sweatiest summer on record. Obviously, there are some things to get used to. First of all, it is completely acceptable to take your pants off when you enter an apartment that is not air-conditioned (i.e. mine). Second, it is important to remember not to leave your unscreened windows open at night, no matter how hot it is, because city dwelling wildlife (raccoons, for example) are not afraid of using the fire escape to enter your bedroom. Also, although they are not advertised as being so, every yoga studio here occupies the top floor of a building, and as a consequence practices hot yoga. After about three sun-salutations you’ll feel like you’ve lost five pounds of water. I truly believe that this is contributing to the city-wide epidemic of slightly underweight water bottle carrying thirsty looking people here. And then there are the pools. Thank god for the pools. Although they are never quite deep enough to dive into, and usually only slightly cooler than my own body temperature, these surprisingly common oases are great. As much as I love lakes, I can safely say that in all their convenience outdoor pools ain’t that bad. They might be filled to capacity with children and remarkably fit gay men in speedos, but they are free admission. Naturally, I am longing for some wilderness, some darker waters, maybe some rocky shores, or even just one mosquito. But what else could you expect of a country girl?

Besides the weather, Toronto is a huge, street meat eating, dim sum serving, road-rash inducing, minority-festival loving, jam-packed city. It’s overwhelming. There is a lot to do, especially for someone with not a lot to do. Which brings me to what I have been doing! Besides lounging by pools after yoga classes, I’ve been working with book-maker/printer/publisher Michael Torosian in his garage turned workshop in Toronto’s west end. It is exactly 10.3km from where I live in east Toronto. It takes approximately 40 minutes to bike there if you go up Broadview Avenue, across Dundas then down Sorauren and across Fermanagh. That’s the best route. It is faster than taking the lakeshore bike path and it is not as busy or as trendy as Queen Street, making it far less embarrassing when you fall off your bicycle once you get caught in the streetcar tracks.

I am the only intern at my job. Micheal has no other employees. At the end of the summer a previous intern will be returning to help us out. But for now, it’s just the two of us. As we are getting to know each other, I am constantly being surprised, confused, informed and outraged by this guy. It seems like he is always either trying to impress me or get a rise out of me, and he is usually pretty successful at both. For example, the other day he told me that he doesn’t buy local fruit and that he would rather support California because ‘the people are nice to me there.' In fact, the only places in the world he would consider traveling to (and which he does indeed make visits to throughout the year) are Paris, New York, Rome and, of course, California. Whenever a female folk singer comes on the radio, he complains about another girl with a mediocre voice singing about the first things that come into her head. But at least that is better than the African dance music that CBC always plays. He claims to be in with the socialites of Manhattan. He has an incredibly intelligent successful girlfriend with an expensive apartment in the village, a PhD in Art history, and a job curating New York's Frick Collection. He’s seen every Woody Allen film more than once. He is thinking about getting a Kindle. He actually succeeded in reading Moby Dick and Ulysses after he graduated university. He wants me to figure out how to remove the text messaging ap from his I-phone. He was good friends with Michel Lambeth, a photographer of Toronto to whom Michael Ondaatje dedicated In the Skin of a Lion. Ondaatje sent him a copy of the book as symbol of condolence when Lambeth passed away years ago. Michael my boss says he never could get into it.

On a typical working day at Lumiere press we start working at ten. For the first fifteen to twenty minutes we sit and talk about what we are going to do that day, as well as whatever else crosses our minds. Then I will take on my first task, usually something to prepare us for the larger task we will take on in the afternoon. For example, one day I spent the morning mastering my folding skills as I used a folding bone to compress the freshly printed pages of a poetry book, three pages at a time. This prepared us for that afternoon during which we used a temperamental sewing machine to individually sew the 42 books together. Forty-two has been a ballpark number for the projects I have worked on so far. We have mostly been printing small runs for local poets’ interested in having special editions of their books. What makes these editions special is that the pages originally printed at Coachhouse or Bookthug (community-minded, small scale publishers with high standards and low profits) are now hand bound and enclosed in hand-made covers. From what I have gathered, these writers, funded by the Canadian Arts Council, plan on giving the books that we made away to people they wish to thank, as well as to people they seek to impress.

We are almost done these books. Next we will be starting two larger projects, both of which I will see through from beginning to end. One is a book that will accompany the opening of Ryerson’s new gallery of photography, highlighting the university’s primary photography exhibit, a historical collection called “Black Star”. Conveniently, Michael, a member of the university's alumni as well as a photographer himself, has a large collection of historical photographs that he is donating to the collection. Being familiar with the work, he has been asked to make the books.

Once the book has been written, we will start the printing process that I missed out on with these smaller projects. From what I understand, layout, design and editing happen simultaneously since we have to cast the type in lead using an intertype machine and then line up the matrices, inverted words, in the format of a page. Then like a big intricate stamp, this ‘slug’ sits in the printing press, gets covered in ink, and impresses its form on each page that passes over it. The first printed page needs to be checked for typos, formatting and ink density. Once the problems are fixed, the rest get printed at a surprisingly quick speed. And then the first page of the book is competed. I ran this machine when we were making covers two weeks ago, and I learned that even the simplest of designs can take more than a few tries to get right. Although this process is the one I look forward to the most, since I believe it to be the most creative and important step in book design, I foresee this task becoming tedious and demanding patience. The satisfaction of bookmaking relies on endurance. This stuff takes time.


If nothing else, this job is fulfilling my love of physical labour. Designing the covers, learning about typeface selection and getting more information about New York than I could ever hope for is great. But seeing such seemingly menial and repetitive tasks produce a meaningful object, a finely crafted book as Michael would say, is something else. I guess it is comparable to when I planted trees. I used to find great satisfaction in looking over a large expanse of land re-planted by my own shovel. Similarly, it feels pretty great to pack up a run of books to be sent to their author. And as I make this comparison, I can’t help but point out that both of these paper loving industries, tree-planting and book-making, are all too aware of their rapidly approaching doom. Both stubbornly refuse to rethink their outdated technologies and techniques but still manage to survive for the time being. I guess the difference is that I am not so convinced that books are on their way out. I’m not sure how, but I still have hope for the printed book. Considering that the latest numbers from Amazon would tell me that electronic book sales are swiftly outdoing the good old paperback, I am still figuring this out. And I guess I am in the right place, or at least general area, to do so. I’m done with treeplanting though. That I know.

Otherwise, I’ve been keeping busy helping my sister plan her wedding, eating the local organic delicious meals prepared by her wonderful fiance Darryl, and keeping up with my fiction reading. I just got to through the last of the novels in my sister’s Douglas Copland collection. But while I am waiting for an ambitious stack of novels to be delivered to my local (!) library, I can’t stop reading this biography of Nora Joyce I was kindly lent. Nora is a fascinating person, one that the nearly blind Joyce claims to have fallen in love at first sight, even though he wasn’t wearing his glasses at the time. Rumour has it that, before working as a bar-maid in Dublin, Nora Barnacle worked for a book-binder. I love that. I have decided that I am going to try to channel Nora in all her matter-of-fact decision making and self-assured courage. But maybe not so much her indifference to grammar or her willingness to spend her life with the condescending and perhaps emotionally abusive Joyce. But we all make mistakes, right?

It’s been so great reading about everyone else’s adventures. I can’t wait to read more. Such interesting things you are all doing! Keep doing them!

One last thing. I heard that the attic ladder at Oxford Street isn’t doing so well. I can’t help but think of this one time I was up there with Luke and Nick. Luckily, the moment has been video taped for all of our enjoyment. And yes, there is more footage, which I promise to share very soon. Consider this a preview.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v87ytavWF1s

Enjoy!
Cynthia

Hi,

I’ve loved reading entries from our friends with Frontier College. Please keep it coming.

I’m in Toronto. I was in a play called ‘Oh the Humanity and Other Good Intentions.’ The production was a sort of KTS ‘best of’ experience. The cast and crew consisted exclusively of King’s alumni and affiliates - even our high-school aged stage-manager will be FYP this fall. Co-directors were Mitch Cushman and Simon Bloom. Mitch’s triplet-sister Chloe whose artwork was featured on the cover of The Watch for almost two years straight did the graphics for our promotional post-cards. It was a six-person cast: Alex Derry played the Coach and in real life he played Andrew Morris before any of us went to King’s. I played the Spokeswoman and in real life I am easily distracted, which is why this blog entry is late. A girl called Amy who is not from King’s but dates Mitch so that counts had her scene with Sebastian Heinz who now goes to NTS but used to go to King’s. Maddie Cohen who directed Eurydice had a scene with Paul Beer who did the humanities program at Concordia and blended in perfectly. The point is that even though we were working in a studio at Ryerson University, the experience was familiar: we could have been rehearsing in the Pit, it could have been the middle of a Maritime winter.

Unfortunately, because the play consists of four distinct scenes that have no narrative connection, there was very little reason for us to rehearse together. This means that I spent most of my time alone with Simon, who directed two scenes while Mitch directed the other two. The play is dialogue heavy and demands almost no movement. Because of time constraints, we did none of the theatre play and game-style rehearsing that I like doing. Instead, we launched right into script analysis and runs. Because there was so little movement, Simon spent the majority of the time directing my line-deliveries. My section of the play runs about ten to fifteen minutes long and I was given a direction for absolutely every sentence. As you can imagine, this was often bothersome. Simon and I got quite good at telling each other to fuck off without using those or any words: he would tell me how much he appreciated my pregnant sighs, I would ask if I could go get a drink of water. But for the most part we got along and I appreciate the direction he gave me. Acting means letting people tell you what to do sometimes: that is part of collaboration, but I’m usually too stubborn to submit to it.

Anyway, about the play: it is by Will Eno, a New York playwright who was nominated for a Pulitzer some years back. Some reviewer somewhere called him Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation. Our production was the first time that “Oh the Humanity” was ever performed in Canada. The play actually consists of four (five actually, but we only performed four) monologue-length plays. Each one is poignant and funny. The writing is fantastic and dense, much more like prose than drama. I play the spokeswoman for an airline company reporting that a plane has crashed and that there are no survivors. In order to get this point across, however, I compare the passengers’ death to the death of my father, I remind the audience that time is the only thing that stands between them and nothingness, and finally try to convince them that they should regard the death of their loved ones with awe and wonder, that they should “feel giddy” that the “plane stayed up as long as it did.”

I like Will Eno’s writing but I like Will Eno the Man because he is alive, not too famous, and wants to be in contact with everyone who performs his plays. In an email to Mitch, he gave crucial insight into his work: “what unites [the disparate plays] is that all the characters more or less charge straight into the almost-terror of a particular moment, keep going, and then find something beautiful or worth affirming, late in the charge. I think there's also a movement from the inside to the outside, that exists in all the plays.”

Though there is no explicit link between them, the plays are correlated by these themes: empathy, humanity, and mortality. But I mean, aren’t these the themes of any good piece of writing? Of any good anything?

Here are some lines from the play:

“We’ll try to move forward, with time, taking hard comfort in the fact that, with or without us, time is moving forward, too”

“I don’t have any patience for things that take a long time. Although, it should be said, I’m usually very deeply juts waiting. Bugs fly into my mouth sometimes, because I’m just standing there, full of want, full of open-mouthed wonder. I stay like that long enough to give them time to fly out, because, although unknowing, I am not unkind.”

And for all you Levinas fans: “the human face is a call for help”

What I like best about my monologue is that it remains ambiguous whether or not my character is being callous or kind. I make an attempt to relate to the bereaved, while simultaneously acknowledging that it is impossible to experience someone else’s trauma. After claiming to understand their sorrow and confusion, I ask the audience whether “these things, or any sad things can ever even be compared.” Then add: “Is it insulting to you if I think they can.” This theme is more extensively taken up in the final scene of the play. Maddie and Paul point a camera at the audience and force them to participate in the recreation of a photograph they have never seen. Paul’s character asks the audience to really imagine “a serious day or a night, in someone else’s life”: “Cuts and scratches, actual dirty socks; serious doubts and homesickness. Someone else’s. A splinter, an unheld hand. A war. Feel that. Look at a picture and feel that.”

As I continue to think about what Paul’s character has asked the audience to do, the more I realize that I don’t know what empathy means. Is the purpose of theatre is to have the audience empathize with the actor on stage, and with humans more generally? Later in the same scene Paul says off-handedly that it is “easy to feel sorry for people in a photograph, to think you understand. It’s easy to look at a picture, wince, keep looking, and say you can’t look anymore.” He is referring to photography specifically but I think this is true of literature, theatre and any form of representational art, since these forms have traditionally been used to inspire a human connection with the viewer. I don’t know if the same can be said of music or more abstract forms of visual art.

I don’t know…I like empathy. I like feeling it and I like thinking that there is a way for us to, I don’t know, bump singular human experiences (or whatever), to touch and move each other. Is this fantasy? I don’t know. Is this important? If I want to make a career of theatre then yes, I think it is.

What do you all think?

Anyway, in terms of the actual performances, things went pretty well. The house was very small (about 50 people) and we had five very full nights. In keeping with the tradition of KTS shows, the audience consisted mostly of King’s alumni and parents who paid to watch because they are duty-bound and “very proud of us”. That’s okay, that’s nice. I have no problems with that familiar audience. They’re all I’ve ever known and they are very supportive. The show ran smoother every night. We did not use very many technical tricks but it took us a while to get things figured out. Also, everyone had to adjust to the audience’s sense of humor, which changed every night. The play is funny, but dark. Its hard to know what people will laugh at. Eno is a master of juxtaposition: he turns the script in an instant, breaking dramatic tension with slapstick comedy and vice-versa. I took a page from Paul’s book and tried to play both comedic and dramatic moments with the same sincerity and almost-detachment. I wanted to remain deadpan and earnest while the audience had a good laugh at humanity’s expense.

The best line in the play happens at the end. Paul’s character stares into the audience and says: “Be more tragic. More forgiving. More unknowing. More mortal. Try to be more mortal. As much as you can stand.” I think the line is so touching, but the audience lost their shit every night. After that, Maddie says “perfect” and the camera flashes and she has captured the audience on camera.

In this last scene, the audience and the stage are equally lit and the final image of the show is one in which actors and viewers are equal participants. The space we were performing in was so small that there was no fourth wall to break. Had there been, we would have broken it.

Anyway, I think I am going to ‘pursue’ theatre for a while. Don’t ask me what that means. Step one is to familiarize myself with all the greatest plays ever written. As with anything, you want to know the tradition that you are stepping into, elongating and almost, but never deviating from. So I will be reading a lot of plays. I will be compiling a list and then hopefully reading a play a day. Hopefully reading a play a day with friends. So when I come back to Halifax (tomorrow) I will have some plays, and whoever is willing and around can come to read a play every day.

See you soon, best of luck, and all my love, ELLA