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Culture Stage

Preview: Goodness

GOODNESS by Michael Redhill, directed by Ross Manson, with Layne Coleman, Lili Francks and Tara Hughes. Presented by Volcano at the Theatre Centre (1087 Queen West). Opens Wednesday (September 16) and runs to September 27, Tuesday-Saturday 7:30 pm, mats Saturday and Sunday 2:30 pm. $20-$25, mats pwyc. 416-538-0988. See listing.


Toronto to Kigali: it’s an unlikely trajectory for a Canadian play, but Rwanda is where Michael Redhill’s acclaimed genocide drama, Goodness, is headed next.

After premiering four years ago at the Tarragon, Goodness has since toured regularly, with engagements in New York, Edinburgh (where it won the prestigious Best of Edinburgh Award), Helsinki and Vancouver.

“I concentrate on making something as well as I can, and then keeping it alive,” says director Ross Manson, who asked Redhill to write Goodness after conducting a series of research interviews at Princeton University.

“I knew I wanted to commission a play examining the state of morality in the modern world,” he recalls.

“Michael immediately brought up this image he’d been toying with: a war criminal with Alzheimer’s on trial. That character became a big part of the play.”

The upcoming production at the Theatre Centre (to raise funds for the Rwanda productions) will also be the first time Toronto audiences see the play in its current form.

“I was never entirely happy with the Tarragon run,” says Manson. “We ran out of time.” Once the play was accepted into the Edinburgh Fringe, Manson took the opportunity to cut lines, rework scenes and re-block the show.

“With an audience watching, there’s a kind of learning that you can’t replicate in rehearsals,” he says. “We had the luxury of revisiting it, and that’s why we did so well at Edinburgh.”

The story of how the show ended up finding support in Rwanda, a country still recovering from the 1994 genocide, stems from a chance encounter.

A few years ago, while on a research trip to Rwanda for an upcoming project, Manson was introduced to Odile Gakire Katese, who almost single-handedly runs upstart theatre festival Arts Azimut out of the University Center for Arts and Drama in Butare. Manson ended up arranging for Katese to be a keynote speaker at Vancouver’s Magnetic North Festival, where she saw, fell in love with and booked Goodness.

“She’s an amazing person who believes that theatre can change the way a culture thinks about itself and that art is one of the most crucial elements of recovering from genocide,” says Manson.

Despite its recent violent history, Rwanda is actually faring better than many of its central African neighbours, says Manson. But he says the lack of infrastructure and the prospect of no electricity at the play site scare him.

“Luckily, the show only requires three chairs and a few props. We’ll be as self-contained as we can while we’re there, because electricity isn’t something we can count on.”

stage@nowtoronto.com

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