Powerful take on Israel/Palestine conflict
(out of 4) Presented by Human Cargo Theatre with Theatre Passe Muraille. Written by Christopher Morris. Directed by Daniel Brooks. Until Dec. 7 at Theatre Passe Muraille, 16 Ryerson Ave. passemuraille.ca or 416-504-7529 This world premiere play fictionally takes place in today’s Israel. It actually takes place on a long, thin treadmill on which the sole actor (Gord Rand) runs, walks and falls down.
As visual metaphors go, it’s simple and powerful (and from a design and technical standpoint, pretty darn impressive).
Christopher Morris wrote the play for his own Human Cargo theatre company (it’s produced here with the support of Theatre Passe Muraille) about the Israeli volunteer force ZAKA — the name is the Hebrew acronym for Disaster Victim Identification.
ZAKA volunteers are Orthodox Jews who collect the body parts of people blown up in terror attacks, accidents and disasters because, as Rand’s character Jacob explains, “Jews need to be buried whole.”
As Morris explains in the program, he’s been fascinated by ZAKA since he heard about it in high school more than 25 years ago and has visited Israel/Palestine four times as research for the play.
The play comes at the Israel/ Palestine conflict indirectly, through Jacob’s particular imagined experience. In my reading, the treadmill (designed by Gillian Gallow, as is the well-observed costume) stands in for the entrenched nature of that conflict: It’s going to keep rolling on, even when this one person’s gone. But how do you navigate that environment when you believe — as Jacob does — that every person deserves help, regardless of their identity and affiliations?
The writing starts unsubtly, with Jacob wondering over and over, “Why can’t I remember?” and a situation is established whereby he has created an improbable pact with an “Arab girl.”
As the play goes on, Morris, via Jacob, probes the seeming objectification in that phrase: Should he call her Palestinian or Arab? Can such markers ever capture or sum up a person?
The mystery of the play is what’s happened to Jacob that has him in wet clothes and struggling with his memory.
Trauma and disorientation are invoked through intermittent blasts of lighting, including some strobe effects (Bonnie Beecher), sound (Alexander MacSween), and the actor’s physical disruption and distress (direction is by Daniel Brooks).
We find out that Jacob is a loner who lives with his mother and has secrets that are best kept from his Orthodox community. I was tempted down an interpretive rabbit hole by wondering what the creators were getting at by giving Jacob certain identity points, but on reflection, making him a standin for a whole culture does not seem to be what’s intended.
Rather, again, this is the imagined story of one person making a singular path through a profoundly conflicted environment, whose moral clarity about the work he’s chosen (“We swore an oath to do no harm”) trips him up terribly.
At points throughout, research shows through in the writing rather baldly. Certainly, this is grim material and there are no escape hatches of hope nor levity.
But the powerful direction and design choices, a committed, wrenching performance from Rand, and well-advised brevity (the show lasts about an hour) make a strong impact and leave the audience to sort through the urgent questions raised.