Post-disaster tale explores goodness

There are many theatre aficionados turned off by Bertold Brecht’s in-your-face socio-political ideals. But the way Sandra M. Nicholls sees it, his works are all about social action.

“Society always needs social action and the job of the artist is to draw attention to the world around us,” says Nicholls, director of The Good Woman of Setzuan opening tomorrow night at the Timms Centre on the University of Alberta campus.

She is directing the final production of the 2010 bachelor of fine arts graduating acting class and the 14 cast members are primed to sink their chops into this stylistic two-hour-plus musical. Also part of this graduating class is St. Albert’s Sarah Sharkey, playing the role of The Wife, a hardscrabble operator determined to take advantage of a young woman’s goodness.

Set in China immediately following the 2008 earthquake disaster, this parable is about a young prostitute with a heart of gold torn between obligation and reality, between love and practicality, between her own needs and that of her friends and neighbours.

“We wanted to pitch the play where it is difficult to be good,” explains Nicholls. “In a disaster people have nothing. Their existence is so marginal, it doesn’t take much to move to corruption.”

In the play, three gods, straight from the Peking Opera, travel through Setzuan searching for a person with innate goodness. When asking for help, everyone turns them away except Shen Te, a kindly prostitute who offers them shelter. In return they give her a bag of coins she uses to set up a tobacco shop.

Soon her friends from the street start freeloading and she falls in love with a loutish young aviator who exploits her wealth. Shen Te is in danger of losing the shop, but saves herself by developing an alter ego, a supposed male cousin who is a tough, shrewd negotiator and makes all the hard decisions. “The central question is whether altruism can exist in the presence of evil.”

Each scene is fairly short and intercut with 11 songs, much like an episodic television structure. Although Brecht’s favourite musical collaborator was Kurt Weill, this production employs Dave Clarke’s new musical score. “Brecht used music to keep you from falling deep into the story with shifts in music.”

And Nicholls lauds master of fine arts theatre design candidate Cory Sincennes’ set of a contemporary world left in ruins amidst a collapsing society. “The resulting design is a poetic statement of an earthquake zone, opposed to a realistic re-creation,” says Sincennes.

As Nicholls puts it, “It’s a rich theatrical experience. It asks big philosophical questions in a spectacular and entertaining way.”