Background on The Runner

Image courtesy Ahron de Leeuw via Flickr creative commons.

In Judaism, there is a biblical commandment that requires every part of a person’s body be buried within twenty-four hours after death. In Israel, an Orthodox volunteer force is devoted to the sacred work of collecting human remains to ensure proper Jewish burial. They have first aid training and respond immediately to crisis scenes, providing emergency life support and collecting the remains of deceased victims, including every piece of skin and blood. What motivates someone to do this kind of work? How does this work affect their daily lives? What role are they fulfilling in their society?

The inspiration for The Runner came to me six years ago when I read a story in a newspaper about the dilemma a member of this organisation faced after a suicide bombing when confronted with the task of collecting, and distinguishing, the remains of the dead which included both the victims and the bomber. It led me to ask myself an array of questions. What kind of person is drawn to this task? The extremes of this sacred calling, so far removed from my secular day-to-day existence in Toronto, wouldn’t leave me and as time went on it became clear that it was something I needed to explore theatrically. It made sense to me that the only way I could begin to understand the rationale behind devoting one’s life to this organisation is to spend as much time as possible with one of its members. If I “shadowed” them I might begin to grasp the devotion they have for this calling and understand the price that this vocation might have on their mental/emotional health.

Having no Jewish ancestry and having never been to Israel I began to question why I was drawn to this story as the inspiration for a play? Looking at the places I’ve been to in the past when creating this type of theatre; Bosnia, the Republic of Georgia, South Africa, and just recently in Pakistan and Afghanistan, I recognised that they have all recently experienced, or are in the midst of, political/social upheaval. They were very potent places to be immersed in and provided a never-ending pool of artistic inspiration. Yet are the human individuals struggling within a politically volatile climate merely the inspiration for theatre? In the end, who benefits from this experience? Is this a form of cultural appropriation or a genuine search for truth and understanding?

Though I am searching for a deeper understanding of the complexity of this sacred calling, I have to ask myself what exactly am I hoping to achieve, better yet, say with The Runner? Why, with the amount of pertinent issues facing Canadian culture that warrant a deep, theatrical examination, do I commit myself to looking for theatrical stories in countries I’ve never been to? Is my Canadian environment somehow not worthy, or “troubled” enough? I’m arriving at a point in my journey as a theatre artist where I need to boldly examine the need I have to use these kinds of countries as the inspiration for my theatre, and with The Runner I will dive directly into this ethical debate. I don’t want to shy away from any of these questions, even if they begin to question the validity of the entire project. Rather, I will aggressively unearth these questions because they will question the validity of the project.

As well as debating the validity of artistic inspiration, my goal for The Runner is to provide audiences with a compassionate, visceral and truthful piece of theatre that will bring greater understanding of the complexities of one’s experience as a member of this organisation.