For emerging Vancouver playwright Veronique West, who's passionate about changing audiences’ perceptions through socially engaged theatre, storytelling is an important means of offering visceral access to people’s inner worlds.
“I think that experience is a really powerful tool for changing people’s perceptions… That’s definitely something that calls me to writing — how can I give people a window into something they might not experience in their everyday lives and show them how they might think about it in a new way or make them question their existing beliefs about it,” West says.
For her latest dramatic work, Marrow, presented by Resounding Scream Theatre in collaboration with Alley Theatre, as part of the Vancouver International Fringe Festival, which runs Sept 9 to 18, at Havana Theatre, West found inspiration from both her personal survival from anorexia as well as her fascination with witchcraft trials in early modern Europe.
“I struggled with anorexia about four years ago,” says West, now 23. “Marrow partly came out of a desire of mine to try to understand what had happened to me, why I struggled with the illness that I struggled with and what the causes were.”
Eventually she came to feel like there was some kind of connection between her struggle with anorexia and her interest in witchcraft. Trying to understand what exactly that connection was is what ultimately led her to the play.
“On a personal level, I’m really drawn to contradictions. So when something has an inherent contradiction in it, that really intrigues me. For instance with Marrow, when I was reading about the witchcraft trials in early modern Europe, one thing that really interested me is that witches were perceived as both powerful, because they were dangerous, but also as powerless because they gave up their bodies and souls to the devil… Similarly with eating disorders, I think a lot of women who suffer from eating disorders are these incredibly driven, independent, intelligent women, but the illness they suffer from, it enslaves them to something that a lot of us would consider pretty trivial and pretty superficial, which is the pursuit of thinness. That contradiction, for me, I think is really interesting,” she says.
Marrow’s plot is focused on the relationship between two estranged sisters: Morgan, a grad student researching witchcraft trials with passionate beliefs about gender politics, persecution and power dynamics, and Maura, who is recovering from bulimia.
“The play begins when they’re reunited and it shows how they challenge each other’s beliefs,” says West.
Marrow has been in development for four years, started initially as an independent project and further worked on as part of a master class at the Arts Club Theatre Company as well as with the Wet Ink Collective, a local artist-driven initiative dedicated to creating, developing and presenting new plays by female playwrights or those that feature female protagonists.
Eventually West’s script found its way into the hands of Marisa Emma Smith, artistic producer of Alley Theatre, an award-winning non-profit theatre company that produces socially relevant plays.
“She started giving me feedback and we formed a relationship. We realized we had similar artistic interests so we decided to work together,” says West, who was brought on as an apprentice playwright and producer with the company.
After hosting some workshops and a public reading, a plan was made to finally present the play. Alley Theatre decided to associate produce Marrow and mentor both West and emerging Vancouver-based independent theatre company, Resounding Scream Theatre, in producing it.
“Being able to work with them under the mentorship of a more established company like Alley Theatre has been really valuable, that partnership between emerging and established,” says West.
This marks West’s second appearance at the Fringe Festival as she previously presented Intrusion there in 2012. The work went on to win Tarragon Theatre’s 20/20 Playwriting Competition.
“It was a really great learning experience because it was the first show that I worked on self-producing and I bring a lot of that knowledge in this time,” she says.
In the lead-up to the festival, West says she is experiencing the usual amount of opening night jitters, common among many playwrights.
“We’re big perfectionists and so a work never quite feels ready to go up when it goes up and there’s always things you see in it that you feel like should have more development or could be improved on, but you kind of have to embrace that now is the time. At the same time though I think one thing that has been really inspiring for me is that I have a fantastic team of actors and director and designers that I’m working with. Seeing how they respond to the work and the parts of the work that they personally connect with in their own lives has been really inspiring for sure,” she says.
In addition to creating and producing her own plays, for the last year West has served as a dramaturgy assistant at the Arts Club. She mainly assists with the development of new plays and is currently doing production dramaturgy for a play in their upcoming season, Angels in America, Part One: Millennium Approaches.
West will also be featured in an upcoming documentary by the Looking Glass Foundation, which supports people suffering from eating disorders, centred around their Something’s Gotta Give campaign.
She is continuing to partner with the organization, having first raised funds for Looking Glass through a staged reading of Marrow and plans to donate proceeds from a preview performance set for Sept. 3.
Marrow runs Sept. 9 to 18 at Havana Theatre as part of the Vancouver Fringe Festival. Details at vancouverfringe.com.
