The Runner, a solo show about a Z.A.K.A. volunteer in Israel, is scheduled to play a limited run at the Meridian Arts Centre in Toronto this spring.Matthew Goertz/Supplied
When playwright Christopher Morris started writing The Runner in 2008, he likely didn’t know that his play would become the centre of a major Canadian theatre controversy more than 15 years later.
The Runner, a Dora Award-winning solo show about a Z.A.K.A. volunteer in Israel, was scheduled to run at Victoria’s Belfry Theatre, and again as part of Vancouver’s PuSh Festival, last winter, before being cancelled by both institutions following backlash from members of the arts community who felt the play was biased toward Israel and included Zionist rhetoric.
Subsequent petitions soon emerged from theatre patrons who felt the play deserved to go on as programmed – but The Runner remained scrapped from both the Belfry and PuSh.
The critically acclaimed play follows Jacob, an Orthodox Jew who must choose between saving a young Palestinian woman or the Israeli soldier she may or may not have killed. Directed by the late Daniel Brooks, The Runner‘s dramatic tension lies not in geopolitical conflict, but in the rupture between Jacob’s upbringing and his belief in what’s right.
More than a year since the backlash to the play in early 2024, The Runner, produced by Morris’s Human Cargo theatre company, is scheduled to play a limited run at the Meridian Arts Centre in Toronto this spring, presented by the Harold Green Jewish Theatre Company in association with Koffler Arts.
The Globe and Mail sat down with Morris to discuss The Runner – and why he will never stop making theatre that collides with human history.
You’re gearing up to perform The Runner again after a period of intense scrutiny of the play. How are you feeling about that?
Really excited. I keep thinking about Daniel Brooks – doing this show is an important way for me to be in dialogue with him again, and to share his work again with an audience. He was so intimately involved with this play as the dramaturg and director.
Last winter, The Runner emerged at the forefront of Canadian theatre discourse due to how the play deals with the long-standing conflict in Gaza. How did you react to your play being thrust into the spotlight in that way?
It was challenging, but if I look at my life in the grand scheme of suffering in the world, I know that having one of my shows temporarily paused is quite low on the scale of great human tragedies. It’s important for me to keep things in perspective and I tried to see it like that while the show was being discussed last year.
Did you read the monsoon of social media posts about the play at the time?
No. I don’t really engage in social media. I think it’s important for society to exist in grey areas, not binaries, and that belief is antithetical to the algorithms that make social media work.
Being able to have conversations with opposing views is really crucial and I think that’s a healthy way forward for people to unpack a given issue – I don’t think social media is particularly conducive to those sorts of dialogue.
Did you anticipate strong responses to the play when you wrote it?
I took my first research trip to Israel in 2008. As a good playwright and thoughtful, sensitive human being, it was important for me to understand all the nuance of the situation in the Middle East – I always try to be aware of all sides of a conflict when I’m writing. That’s true, as well, of the play I’m currently working on that’s set in Ukraine.
So, yes, I was aware of how people might respond. I use my work to protest – to speak out. I’m lucky to be able to do that. Theatre is a place where different ideas can be programmed and celebrated, and I believe that theatre has to be in conversation with the times around us. I don’t think it’s helpful to say, ‘this is a conversation we shouldn’t be having.’ That doesn’t solve anything; theatre, meanwhile, does have the power to bring people together and encourage human empathy.
My job as a playwright is to do as much as I can to offer a complex, complicated snapshot of people in extreme scenarios or situations and to offer that as a form of dialogue.
Did you think, following the events of Oct. 7, 2023, that the Belfry and PuSh would cancel your play?
Never. No.
Would you ever update The Runner to respond to Oct. 7, and Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza?
No.
Do you want the artists and audience members who protested your play last year to see it this year?
I want everybody to see it. I’m aware how it could elicit complicated feelings, and I think that’s totally valid – but people need to see it. It’s a complex play that holds opposing views, presented in the form of a person fighting tooth and nail to see the humanity in people.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
