White Biting Dog

white biting dog judith thompson artist note: “Every fact is related on one side to sensation and, on the other, to morals” – Ralph Waldo Emerson, on Montaigne.

On a brisk spring day in Montreal, one year ago, I met my friend Nancy Palk, who was at the time teaching at the National Theatre School, for breakfast in a small café in the Plateau.

She was working on White Biting Dog with her students and was practically bouncing off her restaurant chair with enthusiasm for the play. She wanted to direct it one day. I was flattered that she saw me in the role of Lomia, the troubled wife of Glidden and mother of Cape. Nancy patently adored the play.

There began between us an ongoing discussion of the play that hasn’t abated. Fast forward to many months later, July 2011, and we began rehearsals the morning after she’d opened to acclaim as Amanda in The Glass Menagerie. This was Nancy’s first directing gig: you’d think she’d been doing it all her life. Round the table were Joseph Ziegler, whom I knew well, and three other actors I barely knew: Michaela Washburn, Mike Ross and Gregory Prest.

The rehearsal process is a fascinating one, not least for its presumption of familiarity with one’s colleagues and in the case of this play, some pretty intimate moments and colourful language. On day three, as Lomia, I was admonishing Pascal (Gregory) to “spoon out my eyeballs and shave off my nipples”. We dissolved into laughter, topped by Gregory’s comment “Dear Mum, today I…” Laughter has been our best means of getting to the bottom of this story of coming home, of meaning good but practicing evil, of manipulation and selfishness. And Nancy, with her wealth of experience in acting in Judith’s plays over the years, has been our intelligent and passionate guide at every stage.

Cape wants to save his dad from death and thereby save himself. Pony wants to help Cape, and Lomia wants to pursue her life of pleasure. And Pascal gets caught in the crossfire.

Somehow evil gains an entry and corrupts Pony’s ‘goodness’. And family dynamics show their power to destroy. It’s been quite a journey.

“Dear Mum, today I…”

Fiona Reid, Lomia in White Biting Dog

illustration: chris silas neal

white biting dog judith thompson

1984 canada

production

cast

Nancy Palk Director

Gregory Prest Pascal

Christina Poddubiuk Set & Costume Designer

Fiona Reid Lomia

Louise Guinand lighting Designer

Mike Ross Cape

Richard Feren Sound Designer

Michaela Washburn Pony

Alison Peddie production stage manager

Joseph Ziegler Glidden

Melissa Novecovsky assistant stage manager Kelly McEvenue alexander coach

generously supported by

W hite Biting Dog was first produced by Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, January 1984 Author’s Agent: Great North Artists Management, 350 Dupont Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5R 1V9 There will be one 20-minute intermission. Approximate running time 2 hours and 40 minutes.

background notes Actress Michaela Washburn was in the Young Centre lobby recently during a break in rehearsal and someone asked her how it was going, how was she finding working with director Nancy Palk on Judith Thompson’s gutsy, poetic drama, White Biting Dog. Michaela grinned from ear to ear and summed up the experience in a single word: “Glorious.”

We at Soulpepper feel the same way: it’s glorious to be presenting a play by this prolific, passionate and seminal (or should we say estrogenial) Canadian writer for the first time.

Judith Thompson is one of Canada’s best known playwrights, her work has been seen around the world and translated into many languages. She is known for the theatricality of her work and for her unique style, which she herself defines as “magic realism and naturalism.” The latter is most evident in her dialogue, which is masterfully colloquial, with a rhythm and melody all its own.

“I am electrified,” she once said, “by the human voice, in all its musicality and particularity.”

In all of her plays, her characters speak an everyday, simple language that somehow becomes transcendent, without ever losing its gritty integrity. They sound like ordinary people but the way they express themselves thrills us with its eloquence, its poetry, and the richness of its symbols and images. Here’s how Pony describes what’s happened to her in this play: “I had to open my mouth so wide to let the love in that the evil came in too… and living with it was just like being skinned alive; worse pain than your kidney stones.”

Ms. Thompson’s work has sometimes been called dark, perhaps because she dares to approach difficult topics – violence, man’s cruelty to his fellow men, the lengths people will go to survive – and because she doesn’t look away from what she finds. “What is extreme about Miss Thompson’s approach,” said the late Carole Corbeil, “is that her characters say everything.” That go-for-broke spirit animates all her work, giving it a rare power to engage an audience.

Yet White Biting Dog has many comedic touches and in general a lighter tone than some of her other work. How could it be otherwise in a story in which a man is talked out of committing suicide by a small white dog? If Cape can get his divorced parents to reconcile, says the dog, Cape’s own mental pain will be eased and in addition, he will save his father’s life. His mission is at the heart of the play and it grounds all the magic realist touches in a tender, powerful reality. After all, which of us couldn’t identify with saving our parents, with repairing what is broken in our families?

And speaking of family, it is particularly fitting that this production marks the Soulpepper directing début of founding member Nancy Palk, herself a noted interpreter of Judith Thompson’s characters as an actress. She is best placed, perhaps, to bring out the singular, surprising grace woven into this play. For this is a writer who examines things fiercely, in order to lift us higher, to bring us to a different sense of ourselves and our world, to nudge us toward grace. The playwright has a very clear definition of it, as well. Grace, she says, “happens through penitence, through sight. Through seeing who you are and changing things. You achieve it through humility.”

It’s like her work, like the experience of her plays, unexpectedly glorious.

Biography Judith Thompson is a playwright, director and actor as well as a professor of theatre at the University of Guelph. She is the author of 16 published plays, including The Crackwalker, White Biting Dog, Lion in the Streets, and Palace of the End. She has won two Governor General’s awards, one for White Biting Dog, and she is an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Background Notes by Associate Artist Paula Wing.

soulpepper production Jacqueline Robertson-Cull

Phil Atfield Geoff Hughes

Janet Pym Natalie Swiercz

head of hair & makeup

cutters

dressers

Greg Chambers Jane Kline

Paul Boddum

Steve Hudak Daniela Mazic

props builders

painter

Tracy Taylor props buyer

Mike Keays carpenter

scenic artists

soulpepper thanks: Mar-Lyn Lumber Sales Ltd., PRG Toronto, Michael Hawke, Emerson Group.

Soulpepper Theatre Company is an active member of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (pact), the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts (tapa) and Theatre Ontario, and engages, under the terms of the Canadian Theatre Agreement, professional artists who are members of Canadian Actors’ Equity Association. Scenic Artists and Set Decorators employed by Soulpepper Theatre Company are represented by Local 828 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.

Soulpepper thanks

for their generous support of White Biting Dog

YOUNG CENTRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS DISTILLERY HISTORIC DISTRICT