New play aims to provide fantastic experience

In the past few years, Maggie Tree has developed a reputation for galvanizing women’s voices in theatre like no other.

Back in March, the young company founded by St. Albert Children’s Theatre alumna Vanessa Sabourin and Kristi Gunther-Hansen mounted the riveting Shatter, a piercing look at racism in the aftermath of the 1917 Halifax explosion. And in 2010, the small troupe presented Folie a Deux, a shocking account of how life changes for two teenage girls when they kill one of the girl’s mothers.

While their two past productions have been grounded in historical events, the company’s next project, Hroses: An Affront to Reason, is an experiential play with quasi-surreal and magical elements. The show runs Dec. 8 to 10, and Dec. 13 to 17 at the TransAlta Arts Barns.

And yes, in keeping with this fantastical world, playwright Jill Connell has deliberately spelled horses as hroses. It’s all part of the relationship that doesn’t quite work, explains Sabourin.

“Jill is trying to understand relationships that don’t work and what that desire is to get back into that mad cycle of love,” Sabourin says.

Connell, a National Theatre School grad, first met Sabourin when the two playwrights worked at Theatre Alberta. Back in 2009, Connell had just staged The Tall Building, a quirky tale of three misfits living in a skyscraper while the world goes to hell in a hand basket around them.

“She has a very specific style. There’s always lots of magic and it expands the imagery. She sets this play in a style of magical realism, but there are things you can fully identify with. It’s like an alternate universe,” Sabourin says.

In Connell’s world, Lily is the granddaughter of a matriarch that runs a paper farm. On the other hand, Ellery, born underground during an eclipse, has worked in the sugar mines his whole life.

The two poles-apart communities are adversaries encroaching upon each other’s environment, forcing Lily and Ellery to meet in a no-fly zone and fall in love.

“There is a third character, a magical horse that represents the affection they feel for each other. It is set in the landscape to create something new from both worlds,” says Sabourin.

Playing the doomed lovers are the real-life husband and wife team of Sheldon Elter and Gunter-Hansen, the company co-founder.

“They have such a comfortable level of working together, we were able to dig deeply fairly quickly when it might have taken weeks if they hadn’t known each other as well.”

Sabourin is quick to praise Connell’s writing for the diverse strata of fresh discoveries in each scene.

“Jill is really a smart playwright. She does so much work. There is so much mileage per sentence. It’s great and the layers are so deep. Our challenge is trying to take that wealth of information and make it clear and simple for the audience,” she says.

For Sabourin, this is one play that speaks to the heart.

“It is a balanced world, not just a beautiful landscape,” she says. “It has grit. It has beautiful moments. It has nasty moments. It’s about how close love and war are.”