WEATHER THE WEATHER by Haley McGee, directed by Jennifer Brewin, with Kawa Ada, Lisa Karen Cox, Colin Doyle, Amy Lee and Courtenay Stevens. Presented by Theatre Columbus at the Evergreen Brick Works (550 Bayview). Previews begin Friday (December 6), opens Wednesday (December 11) and runs to December 30 see artsboxoffice.ca for schedule. $32, stu $23, children $12.50, previews $12.50 or pwyc. 416-504-7529.
Theatre Columbus has given Toronto audiences an unusual form of outdoor winter entertainment.
For the past two years, the company staged the walkabout family holiday show The Story at the Evergreen Brick Works, an updated, clown version of the Nativity tale.
The troupe’s new production, Weather The Weather, Or How We Make it Home Together, blends fairy tale, blustery Canadian winter and the idea of family.
“Theatre Columbus’s Jennifer Brewin gave me a book of Swedish fairy tales as inspiration,” recalls playwright Haley McGee, who played Mary in The Story. “At first it didn’t resonate with my ideas, which had to do with home, getting through a Canadian winter and having women as hero and villain.
“But then I found a story called Dag And Daga And The Flying Troll Of Sky Mountain, which provided all the elements I needed. In it, two siblings are separated and, when Daga searches for her brother, she confronts a troll.”
The result is Weather The Weather, in which a world-class storm throws the earth into confusion and uproots sibs Daga and Diwrnod (both names mean “day,” the first in Swedish, the second in Welsh) and their protective household gnome, Tomte, and sends them far from home.
When Diwrnod is captured by Igora, the mean-spirited troll who controls the weather, the practical Daga sets out on a quest to find him and, along the way, meets a magical prince who falls for her.
“I decided to focus on what home means to these people,” says McGee, who recently gave a fine performance in George F. Walker’s Moss Park and is resident artist at Theatre Columbus. “Is it a place, a location on a map, a specific person or being in a community?
“The fairy tale story isn’t set in a specific time or place. The storm represents any kind of disaster that forces people to end up somewhere new. It could be disaster, war or something as personal as your parents getting divorced. Daga and Diwrnod still get to complain about the weather in the way Canadians like to do.”
Igora, the villain, collects anything that contains light, which includes Diwrnod, who’s been struck by lightning and radiates an electric charge. She was named, smiles McGee, for bike thief and hoarder Igor Kenk.
“Igora is a miserable person and has allowed her personal life to affect her ability to do her job, controlling the weather,” she says. “Lighting designer Glenn Davidson’s done an amazing job providing the troll with the brightness that obsesses her.”
As McGee, the actors and director Brewin continue to develop Weather before its first performance, they’re constantly reminded that less is more.
“I keep relearning that everything has to happen visually, that the scenic elements do the work for you, since the audience can’t be kept standing for more than a few minutes in any one spot before they’re distracted by the cold.
“It’s shifted me away from theatre as an auditory medium, which is hard because I love language so much. It was my entry point into the art form. Here I’ve had to distill the text as if it were a poem, and discovered it’s not hard to kill your darlings in this kind of setting, where the action simply has to keep moving.”
No matter what the weather, by the way, the show will always go on, since there are contingencies for rain or extreme cold.
Additional Interview Clip
Working in a cold theatrical environment:
jonkap@nowtoronto.com
