Centaur’s The Watershed Sheds Light on Mixing Oil and Water
Investigative journalist Annabel Soutar creates “docu-theatre”, which takes heavy documentary subjects and turns them into informative plays to desseminate the information more palatably to a greater audience.
In The Watershed, Soutar, upset upon hearing about the closing of a major federally funded freshwater research station, interviews (as a playwright) scientists, government officials, politicians, activists and business leaders. She then takes dry verbatim dialogue that’s been edited from dozens of hours of these interviews and turns it into an intense (sometimes hard-to-follow) play. Kudos to Projection Designer Denyse Karn for creatively illuminating the walls with the names and occupations of exactly who is speaking and visuals which capture where we are in Canada or in the story.
In The Watershed, Soutar (played by Liisa Repo-Martell) uses a plumbing crisis to teach daughters Ella (Amelia Sargisson) and Beatrice (Ngozi Paul) about water loss. She
then chooses to empower her daughters (only 8 and 10 years old!) by including them (perhaps unwillingly) on her investigative journey – as in a reality TV show .
Soutar and her husband Alex Ivanocici (played by Daniel Brochu) pull the kids out of school and head out in a RV for a road trip west to Fort McMurray to see for themselves what the water-polluting oil sands in northern Alberta are all about, and, how are they affecting our fresh water supply.
The girls (and Hazel, the daughter of the play’s director, Chris Abraham) both help and hinder their Mom. Soutar’s father counseled her, from a conservative perspective, and helped her to get interviews with his buddies in the goverment.
The cast of quick-change artists play dozens of characters, and even do the work of the stage hands. Sometimes this busy-ness is too much. It was amazing, though, to see just how many things set designer Julie Fox was able to create with a half dozen pieces of slatted wood.
Watching a play like this might encourage you to take your own investigative road trip or just open discussions around the family dinner table about about what kind of country we want our kids to inherit.
Location: 453 St-Francois Xavier
corner: Notre-Dame
Tel: 514-288-3161
Dates: Nov 8-Dec 4
Prices $36.50 (student) – $51
www.centaurtheatre.com
Metro: Place d’Armes
