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by Annabel Soutar, directed by Chris Abraham

Crow’s Theatre (Toronto) & Porte Parole (Montreal), Yonge Centre, Toronto

February 22-March 4, 2012;

National Arts Centre, Ottawa

March 26-April 12, 2014

“Food for Thought”

Seeds is an outstanding example of documentary theatre.   All the material in the play is based on transcripts of actual conversations that playwright Annabel Soutar held and of documents she encountered in her investigation of the case “Monsanto Canada Inc. v. Schmeiser” concerning genetically modified plants called that went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada in 2004.  The play, however, is no simplistic screed against genetically modified organisms (or GMO), although it raises a host of unsettling questions about them.  Rather, Soutar goes beyond the usual confines of documentary drama to depict as well the difficulty of finding what are the real “facts” for the fact-based play she wishes to write.  This difficulty includes Soutar’s realization that her own bias may have led her to ignore troubling aspects about the sources of her information. 

In the play Liisa Repo-Martell is Annabel Soutar’s sensitive, highly sympathetic alter ego who becomes interested to know why an ordinary elderly farmer like Percy Schmeiser (Eric Peterson) of Bruno, Saskatchewan, would be willing to take on the expense and stress of a drawn-out legal battle against a huge corporation like Monsanto Canada Inc.  The initially simple facts are that Monsanto, a multinational agricultural biotechnology company, had developed a genetically modified form of canola (the prime source of cooking oil in North America) that would make it immune to its “Roundup” band of herbicides.  For a farmer using “Roundup ready” canola, all he needs to do is spray his entire acreage with Roundup and the weeds will die by 95% of the canola will survive.  Among anti-globalization activists, Monsanto does not have a good reputation having previously developed such products ad DDT, Agent Orange and bovine growth hormone--all of which have since been found to have negative long-term consequences that the company ignored or refused to investigate.

Farmers, however, welcomed Roundup Ready Canola as a major labour saving development.  Percy Schmeiser, unlike his neighbours, did not buy into Monsanto’s ideas and grew natural canola the old-fashioned way.  But in 1997, Monsanto investigators discovered Roundup Ready Canola growing in Schmeiser’s fields.  After he was informed of this, Schmeiser claims he did an experiment and planted fields deliberately with the supposed Roundup Ready Canola plants, sprayed them with Roundup and harvested what survived.  At this point Monsanto sued Schmeiser for patent infringement. 

Schmeiser claimed that the modified canola seeds could have found their way to his fields by wind or have been blown off the trucks of neighbours who were using it.  The case brings up a number of troubling questions.  Can we believe that GMO is harmless especially when that claim comes from a company that has previously developed harmful products now known to be dangerous?  Since their is no way to prevent cross-contamination of GMO grown next to natural plants, how can anyone prevent the gradual takeover of all natural plants by GMO?  Besides this, there are ethical and political repercussions.  An individual will simply never have the wealth of a corporation, so does that mean that corporations’ might will always trump individual’s rights?  Monsanto has its own investigators to look into complaints and naturally come to conclusions that favour their employer.  More than that, such companies also offer bribes and other incentives to lure individuals who hold out against using their products and defame those who do not give in. 

By the end of Act 1, after Monsanto’s first court case against Schmeiser, we are fully on Schmeiser’s side, and, indeed, may wonder what there is left to explore in Act 2.  What happens after Schmeiser’s loss is that he becomes an international spokesman for farmer’s rights against the influence of multinational companies and specifically an activist against genetically modified food.  He even wins what is popularly known as the “Mahatma Gandhi Award” in 200 for working for the good of humanity through non-violence.  On the one hand, Soutar is pleased with Schmeiser’s remarkable rise to international fame.  On the other hand, she begins to wonder whether he deliberately engineered this rise by opposing Monsanto.  She finds that the townspeople of Bruno have nothing good to say about Schmeiser, but wonders whether they were paid to do so.  She also wonders whether Schmeiser’s motives, whatever they were, are important if they helped brings awareness to an important global issue. 

What was simple thus becomes anything but simple.  Peterson, who has been playing a number of highly ambiguous characters lately, is perfect as Schmeiser.  He manages to make Schmeiser’s unwavering defence of his version of the truth eventually seem artificial because it is so unwavering.  As with the various unsympathetic Monsanto representatives, we begin to wonder whether a statement can eventually become “true” simply through incessant repetition.

The other five cast members play up to eight roles each.  To underscore the fact that this is theatre and not a documentary film, director Chris Abraham casts these roles in a gender- and colour-blind fashion.  Tanja Jacobs is virulently aggressive and thoroughly unlikeable as Roger Hughes, Monsanto’s lawyer.  Yet, she is also completely docile and homey as Schmeiser’s wife.  Cary Lawrence is suitably irritating as a Monsanto spokesperson given to speaking in talking points, but also is tough as one of Monsanto’s male investigators.  Alex Ivanovici is completely sympathetic as the local lawyer who idealistically takes Schmeiser’s case.  He is also effective as the loathsome Dr. Illimar Altosaar, a pompous, sneering scientist whose research Monsanto funds.  Mariah Inger is the eager Johannesburg radio interviewer who clearly sides with Schmeiser, but also plays a shifty, taciturn male resident of Bruno, who may be giving Soutar useful information or trying to frame him.  Bruce Dinsmore sums up the conflicts in the play be playing with full conviction experts both for and against Schmeiser.       

         

Designer Julie Fox covers the stage in work stations with computers on them that seem to crowd the simply country-style wooden table dining set centre stage--a good visual metaphor for how corporate and scientific work is crowding out people like Schmeiser.  Elysha Poirier’s projections on the long, narrow screen on the back wall sets the various scenes, reflects images characters speak of and is used to show Monsanto public relations commercials and sometimes live video of the actors on stage.  Lighting designer Ana Cappelluto has perfected the arts of creating precise square and rectangles of light that she can use to isolate characters or link them together.

If director Abraham pushes the material too far it is in attempting to make the show somehow a metaphor for storytelling.  The character Soutar wonders, quite improbably, whether her play is like a GMO.  The question the play really asks is about objectivity and, has more to do with physics than chemistry, i.e. according to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, whether the presence of an observer influences the outcome of an experiment.  Abraham is interested in the cross-contamination of a the play with our ideas, but a GMO can only cross-contaminate a similar crop, while our minds are hardly uniform and are “cross-contaminated” by hundreds of stories, not just one play, every day.        

Besides this, the play raises enough questions about the ethics, politics and economics of food and the disturbing way that money “buy” the science it wants, that questions about art pale in significance.  If you leave Seeds more sensitized to what food as a commercial product has become and listen more critically to what spokespeople on both sides of the issue have to say, Soutar and her play will have accomplished an important task.             

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Liisa Repo-Martell and Eric Peterson. ©2012 Guntar Kravis.

For tickets, visit www.crowstheatre.com.