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Culture Stage

SummerWorks 2015: Seams

SEAMS by Polly Phokeev, directed by Mikaela Davies, with Clare Coulter, Elizabeth Stuart-Morris, Caitlin Robson, Krystina Bojanowski, Ewa Wolniczek, Sochi Fried and Jesse LaVercombe (Seams Collective). At Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace. August 6 at 5:15 pm, August 9 and 12 at 7 pm, August 10 at 9:45, August 11 and 14 at 9:30 pm, August 16 at 4:15 pm. See listing.


Playwright Polly Phokeev understands the truth in the saying that a picture is worth a thousand words. An image in her family album inspired the thousands of words that make up Seams, a memory play about 1939 Moscow.

Its characters are six women and one man who work in the costume department of a Soviet theatre. The period was one of increasing fear, isolation and wintry cold, when no one knew who might be spying on them and making reports to the authorities.

“As a student in Djanet Sears’s writing class at the U of T, I was asked to write a scene for a group of characters,” recalls Phokeev. “I’d been home to visit my Russian parents and saw a photo of my grandmother sitting on a bench, laughing with co-workers. The image grew into Seams, made up of tales my grandmother told and others suggested to me by the album’s pictures.

“I was curious about the faces no one remembers. What were their stories, even if their lives were ordinary? You don’t often hear women’s stories, even those who fought in the Second World War. Added to that is my fascination with the Soviet Union, its tumultuous, complicated politics and how some of what’s going on now echoes the events that took place under Stalin 70 years ago.”

The play’s central figure is Old Frosya, played by the wonderful Clare Coulter, whom we also meet as a younger woman in the theatre, where she functions as both observer of and participant in the action.

“The young Frosya craves friendship, companionship and love, but she especially wants to survive with her son in these uncertain times. As her older self, she’s the framework and eyes through which we see the action. Again, the voices of older women are rarely heard on the stage.”

The play starts in this small theatre community of young people who want to love and have fun, but as time goes by, winter arrives and the war continues, they try to ignore the outside problems as their lives unravel.

“Frosya talks about the need for suspicion in their world, but I think that’s a symptom of a greater ill, a problem with the regime and the social climate. We see how easy it is to turn a blind eye to being responsible for others. It’s just as difficult to find compassion for those same people, whether they’re in the past or the present.

“That’s why we make art, I think, to foster compassion for one another.”

jonkap@nowtoronto.com

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