The many acts of Ondaatje
For the novelist, poet and playwright, bringing Divisadero to the stage was a ‘happy accident’
There’s a trick with a knife that Michael Ondaatje is still learning to do. The 68-year-old author of The En
glish Patient used that lyrical image from Lorenz Hart as the title of his second volume of poetry ( There’s a Trick With A Knife I’m Learning To
Do) more than 30 years ago, but it remains a vividly clever way of illustrating how he pursues his art.
Right now, Toronto can witness the latest knife-trick from the master: the stage version of his 2007 novel, Divisadero, which is being presented by the Necessary Angel Company until Feb. 26 at the Theatre Passe Muraille mainspace.
“I had actually imagined it onstage when I was writing it,” he shares over tea at the King Edward Hotel. “I kept hearing it out loud, kept hearing Hannah’s voice telling the story of what happened to her.”
He’s referring to a traumatic incident at the heart of the story (no spoilers, please!) that changes the life of everyone involved for decades to come.
But despite Ondaatje’s desire to hear it spoken, he put it in prose first because “that’s my default setting. I’ve written poetry and plays, but they don’t come as easily to me. That’s why I admire someone like D.H. Lawrence, who could write skillfully and freely in many forms.
“It was only when I heard (Toronto singer-songwriter) Justin Rutledge performing one night that I really began to see Divisadero onstage. I thought that the character of Coop is so enigmatic and silent in the book, but someone like Justin could put him onstage with his music. A very happy accident, like so much of my work.”
For someone with the weighty and prestigious reputation that Ondaatje carries with him, he proves to be a friendly and engaging conversationalist, looking like a rumpled Old Testament prophet, but talking about his writing with an openness that’s disarming.
“I never start with an idea. Or, if I do, that idea vanishes after about three pages. No, my books usually start with a very small fragment of something that I don’t fully understand. An image. For The English
Patient, I saw a nurse talking to a patient in a bed. I had no idea who they were. It all developed from there.”
So where did Divisadero come from? “We were renting a place in Northern California so I could get some work done. On a-19th-century farm. It was rainy, with a striking landscape.
“On the first day, one of the people on the farm told me about being attacked by a horse in a barn. Her hand had been damaged by it. A very vivid image. What it meant, I didn’t know, but it stayed in my head.”
Things have been staying in Ondaatje’s head, then finding their way onto the page for more than 40 years now.
He was born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1943, moved to England at the age of 9 and then wound up in Canada in 1962. He started having collections of poetry published in the late 1960s, but he really broke onto the public consciousness with
The Collected Works of Billy the Kid (1970), which won him the Governor General’s Award.
It was a work that caught the imagination of a whole nation of emerging theatre artists like Des Mcanuff, Neil Munro and Gordon Mccall, and its iconic status amuses and intrigues Ondaatje. “Why did so many people back then feel drawn to it? Simple. I wrote a story without knowing the rules. It was a mongrel. It had poetry, songs, bad jokes, lots of white space. It was somewhat perverse; you could invent your own version and that fit the mood of the times. I even heard of one production with just a guy, a girl and a guitar. I’d like to have seen it.”
Over the years, Ondaatje has been moved to creation by the world of jazz ( Coming Through Slaughter)
“I love being part of theatre. Watching (director) Daniel Brooks (above, right) work with people like Maggie Huculak and Tom Mccamus (left) in Divisadero inspires me.”
MICHAEL ONDAATJE
and theatre ( The Clinton Special, his documentary film about the creation of The Farm Show), but he also has strong bonds with the worlds of art and opera. “When I write, I often hide truths in my writing about the landscape. I conceal them there like clues in a puzzle. That’s why I love the work of (modern artist) Georges Braque so much. I find collage one of the most important techniques available to an artist. “It allows a whole world to enter into the rectangle. There is yellow and blue against white; there is the texture of the paper, the sheen of it all. It’s an art form that allows everything into it. It’s a pure lyric statement. Like the lyrics of (Lorenz) Hart. For him to put a line like ‘When love congeals, it soon reveals the faint aroma of performing seals’ in the middle of a love song is the kind of freewheeling genius I admire.” Ondaatje’s passion for jazz comes from a similar kind of admiration. “I love the whole notion of community in jazz. Six musicians taking one piece of music and improvising off it, creating a new statement that doesn’t contradict the original material but elaborates on it. “That’s also why I love being part of theatre. Watching (director) Daniel Brooks work with people like Maggie Huculak and Tom Mccamus in Divisadero inspires me. Stage is so strict. One gesture wrong, one line reading off beat and the scene is destroyed. It’s much looser in prose. At least in my prose,” he laughs. Back on the topic of Divisadero, he references the Spanish word that gave the novel and the play their title.
“It’s an event that happens, a line that is drawn. Something that means everything which takes place after that point will be different, somehow. It happens more in art than in real life, true, but that’s because art focuses on those kind of moments.
“And at the end, I believe there has to be some sort of conclusion. It could be a healing, or not, but there must be an ending. You see, often things happen to us when we’re much too young to process them. That’s what happens to the character of Hannah. If she knew then what she knows now, then the story wouldn’t be a tragedy.”
Ondaatje does worry about the idea of holding onto the guilt of yesterday forever. “You finally have to put what happened in the past away.
“One of the great American novels is called So Long, See You Tomor
row, by William Maxwell. The leading character is a 70-year-old writer who can’t get over events that happened to him 60 years before. At one point, he means to say, ‘I couldn’t stand it,’ but it comes out ‘I can’t stand it.’ It’s still in his life. He can’t get over it. That is tragic to me.”
In the future, Ondaatje would like to create an opera libretto (“only I have no idea how to do it!”) because he’s been so inspired by recent productions of the Canadian Opera Company.
“And I would also love to write a Noel Coward kind of play. I told a friend and he said ‘Are you kidding? Are you going over to the dark side?’ But I love silly people, I love witty dialogue, I love the ping-pong of repartee, but I just can’t do it.”
Although considering everything else Ondaatje has accomplished, I wouldn’t put it past him. Divisadero is on now until Feb. 26 at Theatre Passe Muraille, 16 Ryerson Ave., Toronto. For tickets call 416-504-7529 or go to www.passemuraille.on.ca.