A generational journey about life and death
Dividing Lines (out of 4) Written and performed by Beatriz Pizano. Directed by Trevor Schwellnus. Until Dec. 2 at The Theatre Centre, 1115 Queen St. W. TheatreCentre.org or 416-538-0988
“My family history is a fiction,” says Beatriz Pizano, from the centre of the Theatre Centre’s cavern of black space. But this isn’t a warning; Pizano’s warmth in this line is more of an invitation.
In Dividing Lines, an invigorating new solo piece created by the actor, writer and artistic director of Aluna Theatre, Pizano takes the audience through a generational journey, her journey, bookended by the deaths of mothers.
Pizano’s life does, in fact, begin like a Disney fable: the youngest of three, Pizano was a gorgeous kid in Colombia (with the help of a projector, a childhood photograph blown up to the size of the theatre’s back wall dwarfs the adult Pizano standing before it) with a young, pretty mother, Amparo, who died when she was 2.
Her father, Fabio, whom she calls “The Marlboro Man,” retreats from family life out of heartbreak. The three orphans first found a home with unfriendly grandparents — it’s unlikely Pizano would call them “evil,” but they certainly weren’t kind. But there was a happy ending, when Pizano settled with the couple who would raise her, her aunt Julia and uncle Jorge, the metaphorical “Fairy Godparents.”
But this isn’t really a story about Pizano herself, it’s a story about death; specifically, Julia’s death and the part Pizano played in it.
Her adolescence under the guidance of Julia and Jorge, she says, left her with several invaluable life lessons that she has taken to heart, the overarching theme of which bestowed a fierce independent spirit within Pizano, but one sensitive to the needs of others. These lessons, and the life Pizano leads after moving to Canada, crystallizes in Julia’s nursing home in Medellin, where she suffers from Alzheimer’s. (Pizano calls it her “Calvary”; though she’s not religious, Catholicism is highly influential in how she constructs the story of her family).
Pizano is the one who has to decide what kind of ending Julia’s fable gets.
Pizano is unclear about when exactly Julia died, but there has evidently been some time between that event and the piece of theatre she’s performing, directed by Trevor Schwellnus.
A self-described romantic, Pizano treats the entire story — both her own history and her parents’ as well as the emotionally complicated issue of euthanasia — with softness and humour.
Schwellnus’s projection design, heavily involving Pizano’s vintage family photos, creates a large patchwork of images, a theatricalize d version of a handmade quilt passed on through generations. And there’s a tenderness when Pizano speaks about her home country, the place that allowed her mother to have a peaceful death with legal euthanization.
On the doctor who performs it, Pizano bestows an angelic personality.
It’s unclear whether such a beautiful man can exist as she describes or if it’s all part of the myth that a mourning daughter has constructed to ease the loss of her mom.
The moments after Julia’s death, in comparison, feel rushed, almost as if Pizano doesn’t want to dwell on her own healing or has already spent too much time thinking about it. The audience though, one likely sufficiently moved by the rest of Pizano’s and Schwellnus’s creation, might need more closure.
Carly Maga is a Toronto-based theatre critic and a freelance contributor for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @RadioMaga