The Ark, Day Two: Refraction

With three days to go until the next Zucchini Grotto cabaret, things are feeling quite under control.  In spite of a full day and a rehearsal, I got the stage manager’s script and cue sheet finished, finished the program and sent it to print, and redid all the trivia questions that I lost last night.  I even almost know all the lyrics to my songs.  Hell week may not be so hellish after all.  And I can write a bit about the day with The Ark.

Today was an odd day because it fell on November 11.  Given Brecht‘s connections to the first world war and the turmoil that led to the second world war, it seemed fitting that we spend the day immersed in Remembrance Day activity.

I have lived in Ottawa full-time since 1998 and today was the first day that I actually took part in the Remembrance Day service at the War Monument.  I got on the bus this morning and found myself next to a veteran who was riding downtown to the memorial.  I didn’t talk with him, despite the strong impulse to strike up a conversation.  He was wearing his medals on his jacket, and kept his beret folded neatly in his hands.  I wanted to ask him where and when he had served.  I would dearly have loved to look him in the eye and merely say “thank you”, but I could not muster the guts to do it.  My shyness won.  So I hung in limbo on the bus, observing a surreal tension between the solemn pilgrim to my left, and the bustling crowd of unprofound commuters to my right.

I have never been part of the military.  I can’t think of very many causes — military or otherwise — for which I would selflessly offer up my entire existence.  There have been a few items added to the list as I grow older, but I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to die for anything at age 18.  I think it behooves us to take time to reflect (towards any end) on the sacrifices of those who have made the commitment, or are forced to make the commitment.  It behooves us to look backwards and forwards; to observe the horror of what we’ve experienced and to acknowledge that we are never far from new horror.

I didn’t hold together terribly well on the bus as I wrestled with myself.  Nor did I hold together at the sheer power of thousands of people of all ages and stripes and affiliations standing vigil for two silent minutes after The Last Post; or at the end of the ceremony, when countless people spontaneously began gifting their red poppies to the tomb of the unknown soldier.

The Ark company moved from the war monument to the War Museum, where we were treated to a solid staged reading of an adaptation of Timothy Findley‘s The Wars.  This was a slimmed-down version of a full production that was done in Calgary and Vancouver last year, and while the play lost some theatricality in its strong connections to the literary source from whence it came, it was still raw and gritty and powerful.  I hope someone manages to get Famous Last Words to the stage one day.

We spent the rest of the day at the War Museum.  There is an exhibit on life in the trenches that I wanted to see, as well as a exhibit on eugenics (especially as practiced by the Third Reich in its struggle for racial perfection).  The eugenics exhibit was rather provocative (highly atypical of the War Museum, which seems to go out of its way to celebrate nationhood and avoid offending veterans), and went to great lengths to set a contextual understanding of the popularity of eugenics practices in the early 20th century.  it was very common and acceptable to think about sterilization as a means for eliminating ‘feeble’ people from a population, and I was surprised to see a copy of Tommy Douglas’ 1933 Master’s Thesis on display: the title of it is “The Problems of the Subnormal Family” (yes, Douglas fans — he reversed many of the opinions stated in his thesis later in life, especially after learning of the atrocities of WW2).  I found the trench exhibit far less interesting, because it managed to reduce one of the most horrifying aspects of the first world war to a series of colorful panels and cases full of trinkets.  For God’s sake, if you want to help me understand life in a trench, put me in one!  I was flabbergasted that a whole exhibit on trench life fostered less impact than the small stretch of actual trench featured in the museum’s permanent exhibit!

The company was supposed to gather at the end of the day to regroup and organize for tomorrow, but it didn’t really happen.  Reactions to the museum were diverse and ranged to extremes — perhaps magnified by the day itself, and by the context in which we’re working for these three weeks — and so the group disbanded without sharing its reactions.  Perhaps we’ll take a few minutes to do that in the morning; I think we should.

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