Oct. 23, 2007 - Issue #627: Silver Screening
Trench mind: Citadel’s Vimy gets inside the head of WWI Canadian soldiers
Vlaskalic portrays Claire Lewis, a Nova Scotian nurse drawn to the field hospital by her desire to “do her bit.” Involvement was much more immediate, fuelled by a certain innocence. “I feel that at the time certainly, everybody wanted to be a part of it. They didn’t know what consequences were like now, with media and historical experience,” she says. “The war was a great adventure. The only way as a woman you could be involved was to be a nurse and go over.”
T he role, based on the actual experiences of a young woman, is much more than a biographical rumination for Vlaskalic. “It’s a beautiful role that examines a woman’s role at that time in the war and her connection to it. We hear a lot about how men coming back from war wouldn’t talk about their experiences. It was similar for the nurses; it was something they didn’t talk about, but it changed them forever.”
Playing Thiessen’s dramas is nothing new to her; Vlaskalic has had important roles in two other Thiessen plays, Apple and Einstein’s Gift. According to her, much like those plays, this script is deceptive. “What I found about Einstein’s Gift and Apple is that Vern’s writing is exciting—it seems so simple on the first read. To act it is actually incredibly difficult, because he packs so much into the scenes.”
The fact that the events in France are real packs an even harder wallop. “Just knowing these were real people and had real experiences is emotional. It’s very moving to put yourself back in that time period.”
The statistics of Canada’s involvement in the Great War are staggering. Over 100 000 soldiers of the Canadian Division fought at Vimy, and when the Armistice was finally signed in 1918, 10 per cent of the Canadian population had been directly involved. Director James MacDonald says that alone appeals to the history buff in him, but the story brings immediacy to the events of 90 years ago.
“The play is an elegy to these people rather than about politics or epic battle scenes,” he says. “However, I love it because of the idea that the battles and history might make the audience say, ‘Wow, I didn’t know that. I hope they run home and look it up, that we’ve stimulated their interest to know more about it.”
Like Vlaskalic, MacDonald is of the opinion Vimy is more than a play about a battle—a good thing, since, as he expalins, the theatre cannot replicate a war the way film can. “It’s really about relationships, memory and hopes—people rather than fighting. It lends itself to exploring inner mind instead of what would have happened. That said, it’s not without viscera because of what happened during battle to the people involved.”
With that in mind, MacDonald says the directorial concept is stylized rather than naturalistic, and will give room for some representation of the battle, though it’s layered. “The theatrical version of battle works on two levels: we give a certain idea of what it felt like, but more than that hope that it stimulates the audience’s imagination,” he explains. “People love theatricality and stories being told both realistically and unconventionally.”
More than that, productions like Vimy go a long way to realizing the self-described “fierce patriot’s” vision of a vibrant Canadian theatre milieu where all the stories on the big stages are our own. “We should be telling our own stories, know our history and support the idea of Canadian playwright,” MacDonald says. “In 20 or 30 years, a world premiere like this should be common for both playwright and audience.”
In the meantime, Macdonald and Vlaskalic will labour mightily in the cultural trenches and reach out to their audience with a story that underlines the deepest soul of humanity even in the depths of horror. And, says Vlaskalic, Vimy will also call out to Canadians divided on our involvement in a more mechanized but no less horrendous conflict.
“I think it’s so important to remember,” he considers. “When I was going through school we weren’t really taught about Vimy and Canada’s participation. The sacrifices made in the past, it’s important to bring them back into Canadian consciousness.” V
Thu, Oct 25 - Sat, Nov 11
Vimy
Directed by James MacDonald
Written by Vern Thiessen
Starring Mat Busby, Sheldon Elter,
Vincent Hoss-Desmerais, Daniela Vlaskalic
Citadel Maclab Theatre (9828 - 101A Ave),
$48 - $63
New comments for this entry have been turned off and any existing ones are hidden. We apologize for any inconvenience.