Can justice and peace co-exist?
ACCLAIMED PLAY ASKS PROBING QUESTIONS
Nicolas Billion’s dramatic thriller Butcher begins with an arresting image: an old man, dressed in a foreign military uniform and a Santa hat with a meat hook around his neck, appears at a police station.
This is a play that tackles incredibly serious subject matter: violence, justice, genocide, the atrocities of war. But it’s also an addictive thriller. And that’s by design, according to the playwright.
“Part of it was that I don’t think I needed to write a play that kind of rehashed the atrocities of war and genocide and all those things. I think we all know that genocide is a terrible thing and that war is hell,” says Billon. “So I wanted the conversation to be about something else. I wanted to ask if justice and peace are compatible. Is it possible to have those two things together? And ultimately … I don’t want to bore my audience, and I don’t want to create something that is an essay or a lecture of any kind. So for me, the thriller ‘ wrapping’ was a way to kind of have the conversation that I wanted to have, but to do it in such a way that I respect the needs of good storytelling.”
The horrifying events recounted in Butcher are from an invented war in an invented country — which comes complete with the invented language of Lavinian, which was created especially for the play by University of Toronto professors Christina Kramer and Dragana Obradovi. But using an invented language isn’t a gimmick for Billon. “One of the things that was important to me was that I did not want to make this about a specific conflict. I did not want the conversation to be about who was right and who was wrong,” he says. “The only way to sidestep that conversation was to create an imagined country and an invented language.”
Using an invented language also helps to prevent the violence from becoming too lurid or sensationalistic.
“One of the reasons I wanted an invented language is I wanted to obfuscate the violence,” says Billon.
“There’s one part in the play where a character recounts a heinous act. And I wanted him to recount that in an invented language because the details are not important. I never wanted the violence to become pornographic.”
Even a few years after Butcher received its first staging, Billon still marvels at the language of Lavinian. “It’s linguistically solid. Listening to it, it sounds like a real language, it never sounds like gibberish,” he says. “And for me that was so important; I didn’t want the characters to sound like the Swedish chef. And it really helps with the reality that I’m trying to create with Butcher.”
Butcher’s success con- tinues to grow, which has been a pleasant surprise for the modest Billon. “When I wrote this play, I honestly did not believe that it would receive the kind of attention that it did,” he admits. “There’s a moral ambiguity to the play that I was not sure would go over well.”
So he’s pleased to see the strong reactions and complicated conversations that Butcher elicits from audiences. “I don’t want to be prescriptive about what an audience takes away from their experience with Butcher. If there’s a conversation to be had about the nature of revenge ... questions of justice and peace — does one come at the expense of the other? If those conversations are happening, then I’ ve done my job,” he says. “One thing that was clear from the word ‘go’ was that I don’t have the answers to these questions. And nobody has. It’s so complex.”
Billon also reflects on how creating this work has changed him as a writer. “One thing I was very happy about was I approached the play with a real rigor, and I think that rigor paid off,” he says. “And certainly since then, I’ve approached any new project with a different kind of ... I don’t know if approach is the right word. I just ask myself the question, ‘ Why am I working on this?’ There was something about Butcher that made me change the scale of that question. I think because of the responses that I’ve gotten from all walks of life. It’s really been quite extraordinary.”
Butcher runs until April 9 at the Panasonic Theatre. After every performance, the audience is asked to join the cast for a Q& A discussion about the show.