On Reckoning

What does it mean, really mean, to bear witness at the theatre?¹ I ask my students this question at the beginning of every semester, and by the end I hope we have, together, developed some tactics to help us become more critically aware, empathetic, and informed audience members. Fittingly, then, as the academic term was closing in April 2016, I had the rare privilege of attending a performance that demanded I bear witness to a very specific, urgent set of experiences: those of Indigenous survivors of Canada’s residential school system, their families, and others touched by the official process of truth and reconciliation that took place between 2008 and 2015. That work was Reckoning, created by playwright and actor Tara Beagan and designer Andy Moro and produced by their company, ARTICLE 11.

Reckoning is composed of three short pieces: a dancemovement performance with recorded sound (“Witness”), in which John Ng portrays a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) commissioner coming steadily more undone as he encounters the brutal testimony he is meant to synthesize; a realistic scene (“Daughter”) in which P. J. Prudat, as the child of a former teacher accused of rape, seduces her father’s accuser (played by Glen Gould); and a truly hilarious, incredibly poignant monologue (“Survivor”) delivered by Jonathan Fisher, who plays a survivor recording a note for his family as he prepares to commit suicide on the steps of Parliament in an act of protest against the insufficiencies of the official reconciliation process.

These are the bare bones. Reckoning’s power, however, resides in the ways it asks us, over and over, to look again—to look deeply into and engage thoughtfully with seemingly spare scenes. Reckoning is elegant, gorgeous to watch, expertly composed. But it is not at all beautiful—and in this contrast lies its truth.

(l–r): P. J. Prudat and Glen Gould in Reckoning, by Tara Beagan and Andy Moro.

Photo by Andy Moro, courtesy of ARTICLE 11, article11.ca

John Ng in Reckoning, by Tara Beagan and Andy Moro.

Photo by Luca Caruso-Moro, courtesy of ARTICLE 11, article11.ca

In the first scene, Ng’s witness enters his office slowly, nervously; soon he begins to contort as the language of the TRC’s official documents (transmitted through the theatre’s sound system) hits him in his gut, snakes across his body. He grabs his task lamp and turns it into an angry eye, staring hard at words that could scarcely be more viscerally draining. The virtuosity of his movements contrasts sharply with the brutality he takes into his body as he dances with the cruel, bright light. His body bears literal witness to the emotional demands of bearing witness to the material we are all encountering together. He trains us in the act of witnessing, preparing the audience to continue Reckoning’s journey.

Prudat and Gould have an even greater challenge: to act “natural” as they embody two people whose experiences of the residential school system continue to affect them on multiple levels. Prudat’s character was born at a residential school, her mother a student and her father a teacher; Gould plays a survivor preparing to give testimony to the TRC. When the scene opens, they have just had sex; they then begin talking—and drinking. Prudat’s “daughter” has been torn apart by the accusations against her father, who has died since the accusations were made. She has ostensibly invited Gould’s character to her home in order to see him in the flesh, but she hopes that he will evoke her father’s presence and that she will be able to demand that both men witness her attempted suicide.

(l-r): P. J. Prudat and Glen Gould in Reckoning, by Tara Beagan and Andy Moro.

Photo by Luca Caruso-Moro, courtesy of ARTICLE 11, article11.ca

The realistic set-up of this scene makes it gut-wrenching: as always with Beagan’s plays, naturalism is a vehicle for profound intimacy that goes painfully awry and that...