Steven Greenfield and Lora Brovold in After Mourning – Before Van Gogh. Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux. Projections by Matt Schuurman, costumes by Leona Brausen
By Liz Nicholls,
“I have never heard of her…. This has to be a play.”
That’s the thought, inspired by the History Channel series Raiders of the Lost Art, that piqued the curiosity of playwright Michael Czuba in 2018. And it set him on the fateful creative course that leads to the premiere of After Mourning – Before Van Gogh Thursday as part of the Shadow Theatre season.
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Lora Brovold in After Mourning – Before Van Gogh, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux
Without Joanna Bonger, the widow of the artist’s brother Theo, “we don’t know Van Gogh. That painter Van Gogh doesn’t exist,” as Czuba discovered the more he researched. “Every artist needs a champion.” The troubled, famously difficult Dutch genius, who sold but one painting in his lifetime, left behind 600 canvases, dismissed as “worthless.” And it was his plucky sister-in-law who made it her mission, against unremitting resistance both artistic and sexist, to bring them to the world’s attention. “It took fortitude and vision.” And in these she was taking up the cause of Theo who “had worked at a gallery to be able to send money; he paid for everything, paints, canvases, everything, (for his brother) every two weeks for 10 years.”
“You know the famous story,” says Czuba of the turbulent nine weeks Van Gogh and fellow painter Gauguin spent as Provençal roommates in Arles, before the former mutilated his ear and the latter fled to Paris. “Without Joanna, Van Gogh would be (just) a footnote in Gauguin’s biography.”
The Calgary-based writer, originally from Montreal — he came west to get an MFA in playwriting at the University of Calgary — has written plays before now re-imagining historical figures: one on Rosa Luxemberg, one that pairs the composer Erik Satie and the poet/writer Jean Cocteau, one on the French symbolist Alfred Jarry of Ubu Roi fame. And as Czuba has discovered the course of his researches, “for everything we learn about an ‘important artist’, there are 15 to 20 artists lost to time, marginalized by history…. History deletes people, to make it more understandable” He points as examples to the Swedish artist Hilma of Klimt, one of the first abstract painters, and the German avant-gardiste Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Not names in your own culture rolodex? Exactly.
AFter Mourning – Before Van Gogh, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux
Not only did Joanna, a teacher by trade, save the Van Gogh paintings from obscurity, she curated the letters between the brothers, translated them, taught herself about art, negotiated with galleries … a tireless promoter and a self-educator about art. She was married to Theo only for a year before he died, but in After Mourning the love story of this unusually equal relationship continues after that. “She loved the work. And she loved her husband.” And there’s a young Joanna and an older Jo in the play, “a ghostly quality . and it’s also about memory.…”
Steven Greenfield and Donna Leny-Hansen in After Mourning – Before Van Gogh, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux
Czuba, a painter himself as he modestly admits, was fascinated as he took on the challenge of translating, into words, the particular and mysterious magic of Van Gogh’s distinctive paintings with their vigorous brush strokes, and golden, smoky, rippling light. “The focus on colour, the movement of them,” says Czuba, who consulted not only the letters between Theo and Vincent, but Joanna’s own letters. “I leaned into the idea of ‘composing’ a canvas. Composing, as in music: notes and colours, the flow…. It’s all metaphor!” he says. “Art to me is in general one big overlap.”
It’s a veritable Czuba mantra. He’s a dramaturge for dance companies, among his various arts gigs, from film to stage. In fact, one of his partners in Dancing Monkey Laboratories, the “interdisciplinary and weird stuff” performance collective he co-founded, is a dancer/choreographer, Melissa Tuplin. “We’re interested in how we merge text — scripts, dialogue, story — and movement. Their other Dancing Monkey partner, in a revolving roster of talents, is musician/composer Nathaniel Schmidt. And Czuba’s own book No Shortcuts — The Five Chambers, A Practical Guide to To Finding Your Own Creative Process is all about self-discovery beyond frontiers.
Czuba’s career is multi-limbed. As he explains, Czuba came to theatre via film. And three of his screenplays were optioned before the deals fell apart. After “a gap year that turned into 17,” he went back to school, at Concordia in Montreal, in theatre. And now he teaches in the University of Calgary drama department.
Andrew Ritchie, After Mourning – Before Van Gogh, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux
After Mourning has had six readings, starting at the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, and including stops in Chicago and Texas. “From the get-go, (Shadow artistic director) John Hudson was into the work,” says Czuba appreciatively. “There was a trust. And now it’s in space, with bodies! An absolute joy to feel the energy now it’s 3-D.”
“The writing process is solo. But theatre is collaborative,” as he says. He’s occasionally been asked if the painter’s role in After Mourning shouldn’t be bigger. It’s not really a play about him, is Czuba’s answer. “I wrote it about a lost part of history.”
PREVIEW
After Mourning – Before Van Gogh
Theatre: Shadow Theatre
Written by: Michael Czuba
Directed by: John Hudson and Lana Hughes
Starring: Lora Brovold, Fatmi Yassine El Fassi El Fihri, Steven Greenfield, Donna Leny-Hansen, Andrew Ritchie
Where: Varscona Theatre, 10329 83 Ave.
Running: Thursday through April 9
Tickets: shadowtheatre.org
