Facing The Uncomfortable: Jessica Abdallah on ‘what rough beast’

The synopsis of What Rough Beast reads like a news story:

"... a controversial professor is invited to speak at a progressive college, kicking off a political firestorm and tearing the campus apart. As the factions form and the rhetoric flares, on the other side of the city a young man slouches down the rabbit hole of radicalization with devastating consequences."

What Rough Beast, written by Alice Abracen in 2018, is one of the few pieces that has become more prescient as time goes on. At a moment when things are divided between pre and post Covid, the play is perfectly timed, even if we were supposed to see it sooner.

"We decided to submit it for Brave New Look, it got accepted, and we were literally starting rehearsals March 16. And we're like, I guess we're postponing for a couple weeks and then it was like, I guess we're postponing for a few years," Director Jessica Abdallah tells me.

With over 20 years in the game, the Geordie Theatre associate director and Toronto Theatre alum was left high and dry with the rest of us when the world changed.

I ask if sitting with the script for so long made the text grow louder within her.

"It's become different....And the world has changed so much in terms of that conversation of what does it actually mean to be an ally and is being an ally enough?… so it's really, it's been that way, just deep, and in a way that I have a lot more questions and a lot less answers than I thought I had been after doing all the research...Now I'm just full of lots of questions, which is exciting; to be in a room with a bunch of people all bringing up questions.”

So far, the 2020s have been defined by partisan rhetoric, extremism, and the unnatural reality of having millions of digital humans love or hate you with a keystroke. It's fair to say that Jessica recognized the potential risks going in.

“I read it and I loved it, but was terrified of it. It's just this idea of the political nature…just in the community it terrified me…it brings up feelings and it makes you question things."

I'm relieved to hear this: opening the door for questions to be asked and conversations to be had, rather than being handed answers is something I'd like to get back to.

"It prioritises this idea that discussion is needed, but it also highlights that sometimes discussion can cause violence or sometimes discussion can cause negative repercussions. But if we stop talking, it's no better. So I think it really works hard at not giving answers or moral, allowing us to come face to face with the things that make us uncomfortable, and I think for each person it is going to be different. But there is a lot of hope, and a kind of power and beauty in the piece. I think it's more exciting that it's not just trying to preach one message, but instead get you to think outside of the show."

It's no small task to balance these topics. The instinct is to change the subject, find distraction, any excuse to move away from the grenade. While Abdallah understands the need for balance, she's also come to embrace the inevitable discomfort.

"These are such heavy topics, it's like, where's the levity, and where's the action, because we can just become very 'let's talk about it, let's get into politics' but at the end, we're all human beings, and we all want things and we're all striving for things. And so how do we find that within a text that is also very cerebral at times? And then how do we find the lightness so that we can go to the darkness, because if we don't have the light, then we don't want to go there. I think there's just been a lot of learning to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations and uncomfortable conversations. And that's a skill: to learn how to be uncomfortable, and it's okay."

This all makes sense to me. The risks of engagement, the hopelessness of giving up; the things worthwhile in this life rarely come without the struggle of our own transformation, and so to be okay in uncertainty is priceless. To even consider being equanimous in the midst of discomfort is a big step for most, but a necessary one for all of us. How we take that out of the theatre, and use it to push our own dialogues further, that is what will create the ripples.  

"There's also stuff in there, in the lightness, that gives you a break from the uncomfortable so that you can take a moment to think about it and then go back in, and then have those conversations after. That's the beauty of this: really a lot of it's also about ‘what are you going to talk about after the play?’"

Personally, I can't wait to find out.

Photos by Darragh Mondoux

CAST
Adam Capriolo, Keren Roberts, Aidan Cottreau, Simon Pelletier, Charlotte Dennis, Jennifer Roberts, and Rahul Gandhi

What Rough Beast directed by Jessica Abdallah finally opens at Centaur Theatre on March 2nd and runs until March 11th.

Tickets are AVAILABLE NOW!