Renowned Canadian playwright Judith Thompson unveils what she calls one of the most “creatively gratifying” stage productions of her 30-year career this weekend.
But she didn’t write it, nor did she come up with the initial concept.
It was soap maker Dove that first hatched the idea for Body & Soul, which sees 13 Canadian women, 45 to 78, going onstage to tell their own stories of racism, abuse, cancer, motherhood, immigration and divorce, among other things. The women have no prior acting experience. The goal is to challenge the way society thinks about beauty and aging, says the company.
The play, which runs May 10 to May 17 at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, stems from Dove’s “ProAge” product marketing, part of its broader “Campaign for Real Beauty.”
Thompson—who has twice won the Governor General’s Award for Drama and is an Order of Canada recipient—said she was approached by Dove a year ago to direct a play about “the second act of being a woman.”
Since then, the esteemed Toronto-based dramatist said she’s been given free reign to do what she wants.
“They’ve been every bit as hands off as Canada Council,” said Thompson.
“The only thing they wanted was that it in some way celebrates older women. To me it’s really no different than BMO sponsoring Top Girls (another play at the Young Centre) and the only difference is that they asked for the play, which is great.”
Thompson picked the women after she and Dove held an open casting call and campaign that asked women to write letters to their bodies.
One of the cast members is deaf; another has just finished radiation treatment for cancer.
Unilever, which owns Dove, would not say how much it had invested in the play, but Thompson has producers, designers, sound designers, a script assistant and choreographer at her disposal.
She extracted the stories from the women during cathartic workshops in which she helped them write their lines in their own words.
Some of the stories are so harrowing, said Thompson, that at one point Dove expressed concern that some of them harboured a lot of anger.
“I said, ‘You have to see it and you’ll see it’s actually very life-affirming,’ ” she said.
