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Oct 13 - Oct 20,2002 |
Crossing painful borders
Family epic by Michael Miller opens the Factory fall season
By Sarah B. Hood
Originally Published: 2002-09-29
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A scene from Michael Miller’s El Paso
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Michael Miller is a U.S.-born Canadian playwright whose work - especially his writing for children - has won him awards both here and in Britain. Author of such plays as Birds of a Feather, The Story of Nelson Mandela and To Be King (a re-examination of the Brer Rabbit tales), Miller often works with myths, legends and fairy tales. In his upcoming show, however, Factory Theatre's Playwright in Residence is writing an epic loosely based on his own family history.
Having himself been raised by an African-American family before moving to Canada as an adult, Miller's El Paso tells the story of three generations of a family in the past time in El Paso, Texas and a more contemporary Washington. It is told from the point of view of a woman in her 50s, Vivian, whose recent diagnosis of cancer pulls her out of her usual world and brings her face to face with her own history.
"I think the cancer is the catalyst that forces her to come to a certain point in her life, yet it's not a play about cancer," says director Philip Akin. "It is an allegory. Her body is now sterile; her life is sterile."
Vivian's grandfather, Papa Spiller, has imposed on his children his own code of living. A child of freed slaves, he requires those around him to take responsibility for their lives. "He enforces that, standing up like a man, in everything that he does, and he expects that of his family whether that suits them or not," says Akin.
Several members of the family are struggling to come to terms with difficult marriages. Perhaps ironically, Akin notes, "The only marriage which is given the possibility of surviving is Papa Spiller's." Also, Vivian and her daughter Juanita have been scarred in different ways by the death of Vivian's young son, who, like Papa Spiller, enters the narrative from the world of the dead.
In Akin's view, if there is a common theme for these three generations, "I think it has to do with acceptance and non-acceptance," he says. "I think what you find is that Juanita - after all these oppressions - she's the one who comes back to freedom."
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