Play featuring David Suzuki and Tara Cullis comes to UCC
Ravi Jain ’99, founder and co-artistic director of Why Not Theatre, is returning to the school for stagings of What You Won’t Do For Love, hoping its environmental message will connect with the changemakers and future changemakers in the audience.
Jain directs the production in the David Chu Theatre. It features science broadcaster and activist David Suzuki and educator and writer (and Suzuki’s wife) Tara Cullis in a scripted conversation with a younger couple — played by Miriam Fernandes and Jeff Irving — who are leaning towards not having children in a world in climate crisis.
“It’s about how we’ve got to fight for the planet,” Jain says. “Love is a good way into this problem. The question we ask is, ‘What if you could love the planet the way you love a family member or a partner or a child?’ Because when you love something, you’ll do anything to protect it.”
The inspiration for the play came after Jain helped journalist Alanna Mitchell adapt her book Sea Sick — which explores the health of the world’s oceans — into a theatrical show in 2014. It was nominated for a Dora award and toured Canada, India and Europe.
“I thought it would be interesting to do another show about the planet, and if I was going to do that I would want to do it with David Suzuki, because he’s the guy,” Jain recalls. “Alanna gave me his contact and I invited him to look at some ideas and he was really open and excited. He was 80 at the time and he said, ‘I’m going to die soon — you better hurry up!’”
The play was written by Cullis, Fernandes, Jain and Suzuki based on a couple of years of recorded conversations, and premiered at Toronto’s Luminato Festival in 2022. During the pandemic a filmed version was produced, and the upcoming performances will incorporate some of that footage.
Today Suzuki, best known as the host of CBC science doc series The Nature of Things for more than 40 years, is 88, but Jain insists, “If you get to spend time with him, he’s like a teenager. He has more energy than I do. He’s unbelievable.” He adds that Cullis is “the brains” behind much of Suzuki’s strategy.
“She co-founded the David Suzuki Foundation, and frankly, she’s the star of the show,” he says. “Her story and contribution to the activist movements are often overshadowed by David’s. It’s also a beautiful side of David we rarely get to see, which is him in love and in more of a human element.”
The performances are always followed by a conversation with the audience. Jain suggests the most common question people have is “What can I do?”
“David and Tara’s answer is usually, ‘reconnect to nature,’” he says. “It’s not just about recycling or producing less waste. Those things are important, but we can also think more deeply about our connection to nature and underlying root causes and change our behaviour in everything we do.”
Jain says his path to the theatre was greatly influenced by his experiences on stage at UCC under the direction of teachers Dale Churchward and Colin Lowndes.
“The profound experience I had that shaped me as an artist was the way Colin and Dale really collaborated with us,” he recalls. “Oftentimes actors are told what to do, where to stand, ‘Do it like this.’ But they always looked to us for ideas and for what we thought.”
He adds that he hopes his visit will show the young artists in the crowd that the arts are a viable profession and important to pursue.
The UCC visit was arranged with Brendon Allen, drama coordinator and adviser for the Sustainability Council.
Says Allen, “When Ravi and I talked about bringing What You Won’t Do For Love to UCC, we became very excited because this play is both provocation and hypothesis; however in the lab — both artistic and scientific — you have Dr. Suzuki and Dr. Cullis. We knew this would be a perfect fit for a community that values learning, sustainability, stewardship, thought leadership and ‘thrivability.’”
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