Heartlines: an engaging new drama that opens the world for women artists in Europe.

by  Alvina Ruprecht

       Margo MacDonald                               t Margo Macdonald and Maryse Fernandes

Photos Andrew Alexander

Heartlines closes the spring season of 2022 in the Great Canadian Theatre Company in Ottawa.  It is a memory play which foregrounds not only  interesting theatrical representations  of gender but also experiments in theatrical form itself as the author and the director draw examples from Cabaret, from visions of sets  that displace the spectator through the streets of Paris suggesting the period  of the 1920’s when the new modernist creativity  was booming.

The protagonists are two famous lesbian lovers immersed in the artistic experiment of Surrealism. Lucy Schwab is better known as the photographer Claude Cahoun who assumed the  identity of a man (played by Margo MaacDonald).  She accompanies Suzanne (Maryse Frenandez) who designed daring new clothes and together, their  visual experiments  echoed by the light infused multilayered set immediately brings their world to life.

The  play begins in the past , as the less emotionally explosive Suzanne opens the show by digging around in the dusty contents  of an old trunk full of theatrical costumes  hidden away in an attic space. As she pulls out these remnants of their past, a mysterious blond woman suddenly materializes, swimming  across the back of the stage , following a narrow surface of water, defined by a long line of arms, legs and body parts, (suggesting the work of Hans Arp), indicating a watery game of chance introduced by the Surrealists  –  the  Cadavre exquis- a new form of Surrealist poetry.  Sentences are  accumulated  on a sheet of paper, with no  attempt  at any logical  links .   These are the leftovers  of a dismantled collage that some giddy Dada enthusiast might have imagined.

Rapidly the lights change,  as lighting designer Tristan-Oivier Breiding’s  magical effects, capture the shift in time-line   bringing us into  the pre-war period of their adventure.  The two girls decide to go to school in Nantes and live out their lives together as a couple.

Lucy Schwob, is clearly the more theatrical character of the two – feisty, anxious to get on with her sexual discovery and take  on  the physical and social challenges of their relationship. Each one complements the needs of the other and they turn into the perfect performing duo.

Canadian playwright Sarah Waisvisz  then inserts her  lovers into the world of great literature by suggesting that the passionate 12th century  love story of Héloise and Abelard. is similar to the one we are witnessing on the stage.  Waisvitz  uses this poetic reference to help us grasp the special relationship between the two friends who are not a traditional couple but  who have dared to set forth  their own values on stage.  In fact the author uses the poet’s language  to bring into focus the world of the palm reader, a world of “luminous intensity”, that “third gender” , a  non binary relationship that has emerged  within the very personal reality of these two special women.

Waisvisz suggests how the surrealist movement , because of its daring social and political theories,  produced  anger among bourgeois audiences , whose presence is perfectly illustsrated by Vanessa Imeson’s period costumes  and Andrea Steinwand’s sets.   The whole theatre was transported  into the middle of this jolting new world in a breathtaking way. Both Surrealism and Dada rejected hitherto accepted norms of art , of  moral and social behaviour  and these two women’s behaviour scandalized French society.

The first part of the show is a series of realistic dialogues as well as a series of Cabaret sketches  reproducing images  they inherited from  their artist colleagues whom they met in Paris and who made a strong impression on these young women.  The Icons of well-know works of art come  floating around the video screen : the pulpy lips of Dali paintings,  the figures of  de  Chirico, the photographic art of Man Ray and many others.

Quickly the playful Cabaret tone among all these influences become tragic as  WWII is declared  and the two friends realize how dangerous it is for them to stay in Mainland France as lesbians and even moreso because Luci is Jewish. Thus they leave Paris for the Channel Islands.

At that moment the parody becomes a lot more subversive.

The musical performance by sound designer Scottie Irving was particularly  moving as he caresses  the piano keys, producing sad tones  which capture the  disturbing internal struggle  of each of these women.  Irving contributed  much to the sensitive work of director Rebecca Benson, whose remarkable choices  maintained an emotional distance from the moments  brutality , especially when Claude Cahoun is arrested and tortured by the gestapo. The beating mimed by the actor, removed all sense of reality  and thrust us straight into the domaine of pure performance.

Despite the seriousness of the subject matter, the  whole team produced a most enthralling  and sparkling performance worthy  at times of a Mel Brooks musical (The Producers) especially in the second act where movement, mimicry  à la Charles Chaplin, prevailed.

As soon as the occupying german forces arrived in France, we were confronted  by the biting  humour and brilliant satire of these great comedians.  We saw the  German goose-stepping soldiers, with their purposely hysterical mimicry, their hysterical screetching  voicses. As well as campy red and black swastikas fluttering  in front of the soldiers, a clear reference to the “Freedom convoy” that hit Ottawa recently. Veiled references to the politics of fascism raised its ugly head on stage. The timing  could not have been better.

Solid acting techniques backed up by Brechtian theories of epic theatre( to destroy the illusion of reality  but which was  itself  satirized)  brought this to life as a tribute to theatre itself, ta great weapon of subversion.

The essential theatricality of  this daring performance avoided the trap of realism   which might have transformed  us into voyeurs ,but this was not the case.  What we saw was a staging that maintained  a healthy distance between what the production   company said what was happening and what it hoped the audience could imagine, something honest, profound, artificially coherent .  A feat of artistic magic that evoked all levels of this difficult experience and made it work beautifully!