Acting against discrimination
Wildfire
(out of 4) Created and directed by Judith Thompson. Until May 20 at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 50 Tank House Lane. Soulpepper.ca or 416-866-8666. The most-talked about play in Toronto recently was Why Not Theatre’s Shakespearean adaptation Prince Hamlet, a bilingual production that incorporated American Sign Language into the English text and featured a cast so non-traditional in gender and race that those two factors became virtually irrelevant.
Wildfire, which opened this week at Soulpepper Theatre, takes a similarly radical approach to Romeo and Juliet. It’s a socially motivated production that charges at several boundaries simultaneously. Canadian playwright Judith Thompson first worked with actors with Down syndrome in Rare, which premiered at the 2012 Toronto Fringe Festival.
In several ways, Wildfire is the spiritual sequel to Rare. That show ended with its performers passionately pleading for equal rights, acceptance and respect from those without Down syndrome; particularly when it comes to protecting unborn children with the genetic disorder.
Wildfire gives the actors from Rare — including Sarah Carney, Nicholas Herd, Michael Liu, Dylan Harman Livaja, Suzanne Love, Krystal Hope Nausbaum and Andreas Prinz — a meatier artistic task. In Rare, they mainly portrayed themselves and recounted their life experiences.
Wildfire directly confronts the discrimination that Canadians with Down syndrome faced in the past and continue to in the present, from institutional abuse in Ontario’s Huronia Regional Centre (formerly known as a “Hospital for Idiots and Imbeciles”) to today’s dating scene.
It’s a play within a play within a play — clearly explained by the performers, at first directly addressing the audience as themselves, setting out the context of their rising fears and concerns within our particular political and social context. Donning worn-out patient garb, the actors then transform into patients at Huronia, where children with Down syndrome were kept without stimulation.
As an act of protest, these patients stage a rendition of Romeo and Juliet while the guards aren’t looking. Romeo (Dylan Harman Livaja) is a hopeless romantic with Down syndrome who falls for a “normal” man named Jazz (Nicholas Herd). Instead of familial feuds, these characters must look beyond the disorder. And instead of family loyalty keeping them apart, it’s society’s assumption that a romantic relationship across this difference is inherently exploitative.
The ensemble cast forms a chorus of Romeo’s peers, verbally abusive onlookers and authoritative cops, and banishment means Romeo’s internment in Huronia and Jazz’s incarceration in the windowless, isolating D-Ward.
Wildfire might be logistically clunky and narratively overstuffed (including a side plot with Jazz’s abusive boyfriend), but it’s never confusing. In fact, Thompson and the cast are explicit in the message they want to impart to the audience: that those with Down syndrome are capable of leading their own lives, choosing whom to love and taking control over the way they’re perceived by the public (including a theatre audience). And incredible harm can be done when this agency is denied to them.
This directness enables bold creative choices while keeping the play accessible to audiences of all abilities.
The overwhelming charm and honesty of the performers is captivating. And for anyone who caught Rare, the maturation of the performances is thrilling: particularly Harman Livaja, whose smile is blissfully emotive but whose angst is punctuated by tight fists and punches, and Herd, who emanates an authoritative calm.
Wildfire also includes one of the most entertaining elements from Rare, a personality showcase via a free-for-all dance party — a wild balance to more controlled acting moments, featuring famous lines from the original Shakespeare text.