Push, pull, politics and perspectives
(out of 4) By Andrea Scott and Nick Green. Directed by Andrea Donaldson and Sedina Fiati. On until Dec. 8 at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, 12 Alexander St. nightwoodtheatre.net or 416-975-8555
It’s rare enough for a production to have two directors. It’s even more rare to have two playwrights. I’ve never seen a show before with two directors
and two playwrights, especially when the two writers have inserted themselves into their original fictional narrative, laying out the ups and downs of their creative collaboration alongside their imagined counterparts coming to an unsurpassable break in their friendship.
While on paper it screams “too many cooks,” in practice, it’s the unconventional approach that makes “Every Day She Rose,” produced by Nightwood Theatre at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, work as well as it does.
Playwrights Andrea Scott and Nick Green, a straight Black woman and a queer white man, introduce the audience to a smartly furnished Gay Village condo (set design by Michelle Tracey), where Cathy-Ann (Monice Peter), a straight Black woman, lives with her best friend Mark (Adrian ShepherdGawinksi), a queer white man, in this production directed by Nightwood Theatre’s artistic director Andrea Donaldson (straight, white) as well as Sedina Fiati (Black, queer) in her directorial debut.
It’s 2016 and the Pride Parade is about to start, and Mark, a few drinks deep, is urging Cathy-Ann to put on her rainbow taffeta costume (costumes by Ming Wong) and grab a spot.
Then Black Lives Matter stages its now-famous protest to block the parade for 30 minutes, demanding more inclusive space for queer Black Torontonians and that uniformed police officers be disinvited from marching.
Cathy-Ann and Mark’s friendship is put to an unprecedented test. She is inspired; he is angered. She wants a discussion; he shuts it down. She wants to stay in; he wants to party.
Slowly, the dynamics that inform their friendship, their financial status, their political beliefs, their sense of safety in the world and how much room they can take up in it come through.
At the same time, Andrea (also Peter) and Nick (also Shepherd-Gawinski) emerge as the puppet masters in Mark and
Cathy-Ann’s story, exposing the reasons behind certain character or plot choices as they unfold before our eyes. They argue about making Mark more sympathetic, about finding CathyAnn’s backstory, about whether they met in high school or university.
It’s an interesting but slightly toothless approach at first — jokes about play fundraisers and measly development grants got inside-baseball laughs from the opening night audience, and it’s easy to see elements of Mark and CathyAnn’s relationship echoed in words, movements, and tones between Andrea and Nick.
But the reason for Andrea and Nick’s presence gains steam when they start asking each other more uncomfortable questions — why exactly did he ask her to collaborate? What is this story for? The friction between them creates static in Cosette Pin’s sound design and sends Rebecca Picherack’s lighting flickering; it puts the whole project off-balance.
It’s interesting that the final break between Andrea and Nick comes after a discussion of narrative structure, which is far more revealing than it may seem: Nick is drawn to the wellmade play set in a living room, Andrea has a more anachronistic, fourth-wall-breaking style.
This goes back to the theatre industry and the way we tell stories in general; the “wellmade play” comes from a long line of dead white men, forming the genre’s patriarchal, colonial standard for excellence. Patriarchal theatre also praises a singular genius, a playwright or director or actor, over a collective group.
It’s certainly not the first time a play has meta-theatrically included the process of writing it into its story, but Nightwood, a mandated feminist company, and Buddies, a mandated queer company, are diving into rather rebellious waters with a cowritten, co-directed play that resists a straightforward narrative (however much it leaves underexplored in the latter aspect, if its ambitions are really to mess with expectations, perspectives, and identities in storytelling).
But Peter and Shepherd-Gawinski deftly handle the jumps in character, and Shepherd-Gawinski in particular has a sharp comedic sensibility — a puzzled, furrowed brow or small, excited jump goes a long way.
Then again, isn’t that the way it goes; the white gay man has the opportunity to be fun and frivolous when the Black woman appears too serious in comparison. But Peter as CathyAnn and Andrea shows them both to be as kind as they are frustrated, and when CathyAnn moves away from her own friendship, Andrea leans further toward her partner.
The questions that Green and Scott pose to each other, and larger racial, queer and artistic communities in Toronto around allyship, motives, stories and tokens are — surprise, surprise — not answered in a 75-minute play. But if it does anything, it helps to reinforce the idea that going it alone is not only unnecessary, it’s just not as productive.
Carly Maga is a Toronto-based theatre critic and a freelance contributor for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @RadioMaga