The Monument is personal, universal
The Monument Written by Colleen Wagner. Directed by Jani Lauzon. Until April 1 at Factory Theatre, 125 Bathurst St. FactoryTheatre.ca or 416-504-9971
The most powerful, and the most unfortunate, aspect of Colleen Wagner’s 1995 play The
Monumentis its universality; its depiction of war and the human destruction it brings to any and all sides of the fight is enduringly relevant.
That’s why it’s been translated into about 12 different languages and performed extensively around the world, from Australia to Romania to China to Rwanda. The latter production, by Isoko Theatre, which travelled to Toronto in 2011, was directed by Jennifer Capraru, who wrote that audiences “insisted it had all really been written by a Rwandan.”
In reality, Alberta-born Wagner was inspired to write the play after travelling in Asia and learning about the Bosnian War in the 1990s, specifically about how rape was used as a tactic of genocide.
The two characters Mejra and Stetko reflect that origin: Stetko (Augusto Bitter) is a young, ribald man, guilty of raping and murdering 23 young women, and Mejra (Tamara Podemski) is the mysterious older woman who saves him from hanging when he agrees to obey her for the rest of his life. She beats him and psychologically torments him as his cocksure defences break down and he realizes the truth of his crimes.
In the new production on now at Factory Theatre (which I saw in its final preview), director Jani Lauzon, of Métis descent, brings Wagner’s play fiercely back to home soil.
Indeed, the Factory Theatre Mainstage hits the audience with the smell of earth, wood and sage from Elahe Marjovi’s set before they’ve even taken your seats. A stone platform rises from a stage covered in dirt and wood shavings, the kind of platform that a statue would stand on.
Surrounding it are lengths of thick rope hanging from the ceiling with frayed endings. They could have been Stetko’s end, but instead they represent women tied up and tortured by men like Stetko — women he is unable, or refuses, to name until the play’s climax, one that Lauzon makes particularly heartbreaking with the incorporation of red dresses, symbolizing Canada’s missing and murdered Indigenous women.
Each dress gives individuality to the hanging ropes, as Stetko reveals the names of his victims.
The visual impact of this moment is hard to understate, especially in the context of the recent acquittals of Raymond Cormier and Gerald Stanley in the deaths of Tina Fontaine and Colten Boushie, respectively. On the surface, there is a biting difference because Stetko was found guilty of his crimes, but Mejra’s pain, and her decision to not only save Stetko’s life but essentially make him her dependant, is reflective of the way Canada’s Indigenous population must continue to live with and work alongside systems and people that hurt them.
It’s messy, which describes the push and pull of Mejra and Stetko’s perplexing relationship.
Podemski is powerful as Mejra, which sometimes conquers our ability to sympathize with Bitter’s Stetko. The way their relationship develops to earn the play’s moving finish feels somewhat rushed or forced; the connection between Bitter and Podemski didn’t always hit.
But with Lauzon’s effect on the senses — the smell of the sage, the sight of the red dresses and Deanna Choi’s sound design of women singing — she reminds us that the play, and her interpretation of it, is a monument to something much bigger than these two specific people.