At Stratford, renegade women on the high seas and in ancient Greece – Toronto Star

In the Stratford Festival's Bakkhai, starring Lucy Peacock, director Jillian Keiley focuses on "sex-positive feminism." ( LYNDA CHURILLA ) In Treasure Island, staged at the 2017 Stratford Festival by Nicolas Billon, half of the pirates are women as are two characters who were male in the book. ( CYLLA VON TIEDEMANN )

They had me at lady pirates.

Perusing the 2017 Stratford Festival season, its focus on diversity is hard to miss: there are new plays about the Inuit in Canadas North (The Breathing Hole) and another about a difficult episode in the history of East Indian immigration to Vancouver (The Komagata Maru Incident). Actors of colour are playing the twins in Twelfth Night (Sarah Afful and Michael Blake) and the future Elizabeth I of England (Bahia Watson in The Virgin Trial).

Another strong seam running through the season is a reconsideration of gender in classic stories. Staging the Greek tragedy Bakkhai is for director Jillian Keiley an unfolding exploration of different ways of thinking about women and female sexuality.

More about Keiley and her Dionysian revels in a bit. Lets get back to renegade women on the high seas.

The festivals production of the beloved classic Treasure Island has been adapted by Governor Generals Award-winning playwright Nicolas Billon. Faced with a source text that has virtually no significant female characters, intervening creatively in the storys depiction of gender was a no-brainer, says the Toronto-based writer.

Most of the play takes place on a boat so theyre all sailors, its the 1700s, I get that, says Billon. But Im not interested in going to see a museum piece and I want to write something that reflects the world that I live in . . . it just made sense to me that we would have women in the story.

Thus the marooned sailor Ben Gunn is a woman (Katelyn McCulloch) as is Dr. Diana Livesey (Sarah Dodd); both characters in Robert Louis Stevensons book are men. Half of the pirates in Long John Silvers crew are female not historically implausible, Billon confirms, as a minority of women featured in the centuries-long history of seafaring robbery.

While Treasure Island is in the festivals Schulich Childrens Plays series (younger theatregoers get a treasure map when they enter the theatre, part of director Mitchell Cushmans interactive approach), Bakkhai is for a more grown-up crowd.

Keiley, artistic director of English theatre at the National Arts Centre, says she was doused in modern feminist theory in preparing the production, specifically focusing on sex-positive feminism, when you not only own your own body but you own your own orgasm. While these questions are millennia old, this is a debate thats happening now, about who derives pleasure from women having sex.

While ostensibly about the conflict between the rational king of Thebes, Pentheus (Gordon S. Miller), and the god of wine and sex, Dionysus (Mac Fyfe), Euripides play is unique among Greek tragedies for the central role it gives its chorus, the titular Bakkhai: the women of Thebes who are whipped into a savage frenzy under Dionysuss influence.

While Keiley says her multi-ethnic, multi-generational chorus of Bakkhai are beautiful, so seductive, like rock stars, theyre also mean and bad. They tear down buildings and they tear apart cattle.

Working through these seeming contradictions has been a challenge, Keiley admits. I want the women to be good. If were making a play about how great women are, cant we make them heroes too? Im wrestling with that all the way.

Besides conversations with the translator Anne Carson, Keiley says her approach has been informed by the occasional presence of Western University professor Kim Solga in the rehearsal room.

Solgas program note calls Bakkhai the most political play youll see this year because its about how womens bodies, sexual lives and physical pleasures remain sources of anxiety for and something to be anxiously controlled by those in charge including, Solga points out, the United Statess current grabber-in-chief.

Bracing stuff, not least for the productions director: I was raised severely Catholic and this has been a scary thing for me, says Keiley, but I figure if youre not scared, youre not really in the game.

Treasure Island is on now at the Avon Theatre; Bakkhai begins previews at the Tom Patterson Theatre May 27. See https://www.stratfordfestival.ca/WhatsOn/ThePlays stratfordfestival.caEND for information. Karen Fricker is a Toronto Star theatre critic. She alternates the Wednesday Matine column with critic Carly Maga.

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At Stratford, renegade women on the high seas and in ancient Greece - Toronto Star