PLAYWRIGHT PREPARES FOR END OF THE WORLD
‘Dark romantic comedy’ explores life’s everyday pressures
Anyone researching survivalist — or “prepper” tactics — is bound to find themselves going down some interesting rabbit holes. Just ask Vancouver playwright Jordan Hall, who got her possession-and-acquisition firearms licence and went on a hunter-training weekend for her art.
“I did try to get a little bit handson,” said Hall, who wrote the upcoming play, How to Survive an Apocalypse.
As part of her research, she signed on with a Vancouver-based company, Eat-Wild. “They’re all about having an ethical relation- ship with your food, and sustainability,” she said. “Clearly, there are much crazier pockets. But those ones are the less immediately accessible and a lot warier. I don’t know if I could infiltrate a real survivalists’ commune.”
In the production (from Touchstone Theatre in association with Playwrights Theatre Centre and the Firehall Arts Centre), directed by Katrina Dunn, four characters face apocalypse preparation with different attitudes.
“When we’re thinking about different prepping strategies, some of it is a lot more about how personal philosophies are interacting with the idea of it,” Hall said.
The main character, Jen, publishes a magazine; she is married to Tim (Sebastien Archibald), an out-of-work game designer. Bruce (Zahf Paroo), a consultant brought in to help Jen with her magazine, introduces her to the idea of surviving the collapse of society.
Abby (Lindsey Angell) is a friend of Jen’s whose marriage has collapsed, and who is trying to figure out the next stage of her life.
“Jen and Tim are very much about that sense of, ‘How do we maintain our personal comfort?’ In many ways, they’re supposed to be us. Most of us, if we had our druthers, would just not deal with any of this. We’d rather go back to the preoccupations of our lives as opposed to thinking, ‘What horrible thing may kill me, and do I have enough gas masks and Camel-Baks full of water to hike out of the city, and what do I do out of the city? Do I have money in plastic bags to bribe the corrupt officials?’ ” Hall said.
“They would like to be comfortable. But because they are experiencing and grappling with a lot of failure, they end up turning toward prepping as an escape valve.”
“I would call it a dark romantic comedy,” said Claire Hesselgrave, who plays Jen. “There’s some stuff in here that hits a little close to
home, be it relationship issues or just the fact that we’re not sure how we’re going to make a living. Like, we (millennials) were told we could do anything, and actually, we can’t.
“I would add it has a ton of funny stuff. Jordan is super-smart and super-quick. We’re all just trying to keep up.”
Theatregoers who caught one of Hall’s previous works, Kayak, will find thematic links to the earlier piece in the new play.
“Over the course of my lifetime, climate change has become this really prevalent thing. Where Kayak was looking at the problems of activism and apathy, How to Survive is in many ways looking at it almost from the other side — the effects, this sense of looming pressure that we all have on the ways we try to cope.
“In particular, on the ways in which the current cohort of young adults are trying to figure out how to be grown-ups, how to be mature, in an environment infected by that pressure.”
After all her research, both hands-on and through reading books like Neil Strauss’ Emergency, does she feel more prepared? “A little, I guess,” Hall said. “Just the process of doing it confirmed in me that it would be much better for us to figure out resiliency, and how to help each other, rather than to actually engage in a lot of super-prepper behaviours. Permaculture and official crisis management are so much better than the anarchist plans real survivalists sometimes put out.”
There’s some stuff in here that hits a little close to home, be it relationship issues or the fact that we’re not sure how we’re going to make a living.