Jesus Chrysler
Jesus Chrysler
by Tara Beagan
A world premiere by Dora-Award winning playwright Tara Beagan, Jesus Chrysler is an immersive production that revolves around Toronto activist and director Eugenia “Jim” Watts and poet Dorothy Livesay. An unsung icon of 1930s Toronto theatre, Jim had her work banned by a Prime Minister before enlisting in The Spanish Civil War, becoming its sole female ambulance driver. Livesay went on to become a two-time Governor General Award winner for poetry and an Officer of The Order of Canada. Jesus Chrysler invites youto explore their complex relationship in a show that engages with and questions the intersection of art and politics.
Jesus Chrysler opens on December 1st/2011 produced by Praxis Theatre in Association with Theatre Passe Muraille
Aviva Armour-Ostroff (l) as Dorothy Livesay and Margaret Evans (r) as Eugenia "Jim" Watts. Photo by Will O'Hare
Written by Tara Beagan
Directed by Michael Wheeler
Produced by Aislinn Rose
Performed by Margaret Evans, Jeffrey Wetsch and Aviva Armour-Ostroff
Stage Managed by Dini Conte
Set and Costume Design by Scott Penner
Sound Design by Verne Good
Lighting Design by David DeGrow
Assistant Directed by Laura Nordin
Read below to learn about our earlier iterations of this project at The Toronto Fringe, HATCH: emerging performance projects. LabCab and The Rhubarb Festival.
by Michael Wheeler
In the winter of 2009 I attended a theatre history lecture at Toronto Free Gallery by Alex Fallis on the The Progressive Arts Club and the theatre created by artists who were opposed to many of the anti-civil rights policies enacted by Prime Minister Bennett in the 1930s. These people proved to be so fascinating that I elected to create with Praxis Theatre a show about them, Tim Buck 2, which played at The Tranzac Club as part of the 2009 Toronto Fringe Festival.
This led to our Harbourfront Centre HATCH workshop Section 98, which expanded the scope of our work to some other instances when civil rights proved to be a contentious issue for Canadians: namely the FLQ crisis, the Air India bombing, Omar Khadr, and the treatment of Afghan detainees captured by Canadian soldiers. Both the Fringe show and our HATCH workshop were extremely useful in terms of exploring who these people were, what they were concerned about, and the complexity of balancing our country’s commitment to civil rights and concerns of national security.
Unfortunately, neither of these initial explorations did an awesome job of storytelling. So this spring and summer we went back to the drawing board with this project and thought about how to move beyond ‘staged dramaturgy’ and into narrative-based work informed by these themes.
The most consistent positive feedback from our open source creative process revolved around curiosity and fascination with Eugenia “Jim” Watts.
Both presentations involved an online component that allowed the audience to participate with or respond to our work: Tim Buck 2 asked the audience to return to the website to learn the results of a poll conducted at the conclusion of a debate at the end of the show. These posts also generated some interesting conversations in their comments sections.
Section 98 was more intrinsically attached to the internet with Praxis Artistic Producer Aislinn Rose acting as Open Source Project Leader, sharing parts of our process online, actively seeking participation from our community, and developing an infrastructure that encouraged live feedback over the web or through texts during the workshop presentation.
There were also quite a few normal conversations, in person, with live human beings who had seen the show(s).
The first conclusion was that the core personality we had explored that generated a unique resonance with both audiences and ourselves was Eugenia “Jim” Watts, played in both productions by Margaret Evans. A core political organizer and theatre director in 1930s Toronto, she co-directed the legendary civil rights play banned by Bennett, Eight Men Speak, and later went on to be one of two women serving with the Mackenzie Papineau Brigade in the Spanish Civil War where she was an ambulance driver. She was also involved with a number of other projects; she was very busy, and interesting, and worth being the impetus for a work of art.
Margaret Evans playing Jim Watts in Section 98 as part of HATCH at Harbourfront Centre
The second conclusion was that this piece required a playwright, and a good one. This playwright would preferably be an artist who had experience creating theatre about historical events for a contemporary audience (we talked a lot about avoiding a ‘bio pic’) and a passion for social justice.
"Jim" Watts on the balcony of The Factory Theatre in Jesus Chrysler at Lab Cab. Photo by Julien Lafleur courtesy of Lab Cab
It was at this point that playwright Tara Beagan joined Praxis Theatre in continuing our work on this project, renaming it Jesus Chrysler during a July 2010 workshop. Tara and I worked together for two years on Crate Productions’ The Fort at York, and she also acted as an outside eye for Praxis on our Toronto Fringe co-pro, Dyad, but Jesus Chrysler is her first official work with company and we are thrilled to welcome her.
The first generation of this project with text by Tara Beagan was presented in two standing-room-only presentations in the green room of The Factory Theatre as part of Lab Cab on September 18 and September 19. This 15 minute monologue for Jim Watts became the core of the show as we now understand it as written by Tara. After LabCab, we were admitted to the Rhubarb Festival at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre with a 25 minute slot.
Two more characters were added, poet Dorothy Livesay (who had also appeared in our Fringe show Tim Buck 2) and a man named Nate, not based on any particular historical personality. This latest step in our development of a full-length work about Jim Watts played from Feb 16-19 2011 at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in the Cabaret Space as part of Rhubarb.
Jesus Chrysler has been generously supported by:
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