By: Ryan Tuchow
This is the third and final day of the live script reads. This script is also selected for either first, second or third place in the feature screenplay competition. The actors had three weeks to prepare for the reading. Based on the study of her life by Thomas of Cantimpré. With 12 cast members performing 31 characters. A story about Christina St. Trond, now known as Saint Christina Mirabilis, (a name that New Hampshire screenwriter Demitra Papadinis (who was there to watch the script come to life) translates to the eponym of the screenplay, The Wonderful) who lived during the 12th century in what is now called Belgium. The work is inspired by the hagiography and study of her life done by Thomas of Cantimpré.
The screenplay begins by taking the audience to a “grey world.” The work, referred to by the cast and crew as a “medieval morality play” by the cast and managing artistic director it is a story about the life of a woman who tries to live by the words of her faith despite all the obstacles and hinderances which try to divert her.
Religion works itself in in both explicit and subtle ways. The appearance of religious figures, but also clever questions such as “why would anyone hurt themselves on purpose?” A reference to Christ’s sacrifice on the cross which is at the centre of the Christian faith.
There is the anaphora of shit situating the play in a dirty world and when sexual scenes begin the screenplays the reality is then filled with dirty people.
Arrogance and humility clash in this world of harsh conditions and harsh people. A woman who doesn’t want to become a nun is constantly told she can’t be a nun because she is not of the right material. She lives in an abusive family, an 11th century Cinderella, alone with only her faith to guide her.
There is a strange almost hallucinatory passage where she tries to find a convent. She travels in circles, dying early on in the play after suffering a seizure, and the sisters after finding the body complain only about how much a funeral will cost. Christina meets the devil for a moment after she dies.
At the funeral service angelic music begins to play and Christina is brought back to life. The mass continues as Christina hovers overhead yelling and chastising the sinners with wild ranting of threats of fire and death. There is a heated exchange between Christina and the Father Godfrey who confront each other with their beliefs, Christina believes sin is around her, and she smells sin. Father Godfrey tries to control the congregants and keep them calm.
Christina defies all the laws of nature as she tries to get God’s forgiveness. She believes she is sent back to the world by the devil. And when she opens her mouth to scream she emits beautiful music that allows her to escape harm.
Christina, swept up by a sort of madness fights back against a man trying to kill her, only to get thrust into a river. There is a strange coincidence when Christina meets a man she met earlier.
Back at the church Father Godfrey performs a long winded exorcism and there is a climactic clash between the faiths of Christina and Godfrey who believes she is possessed by a devil.
She is imprisoned and the words of the bible give her hope and strength and she is able to sing. An angel visits her and there is blackness and smoke while the pit of hell is shown to Christina. And the devil appears to threaten her, and an angel intercedes, sending her then to heaven, where she is told, by Jesus, that she will have to serve him to help turn sinners toward him and that she will one day return to him.
She is back at earth and her breast milk is glowing, this performance is hard to situate in any time because of the presence of motorcycles, something that isn’t invented until the 19th century which makes it a more modern work.
Christine then travels around, eating garbage, continuing to rant and seeing visions of people burning. And she asks uncaring, confused pedestrians if they understand what waits for them.
The work is heavy with the narrator’s description of scenes and details, as well as the character of Christina desperately monologuing with interjections of modern day creations like lyrics from the 1980 Pat Benatar song Hit Me With You Best Shot.
The character of Christina is seen as a madwoman by many and after advertising her suffering and making a show of it she is put into another prison. And the blending of past and present is jarring perhaps as a way to jar the audience into thinking about how the events of this screenplay could occur at any point.
Religion and God are real presences in this work appearing for sinners to show them the way.
Her mission is to suffer for others, just like Jesus did, and comedy breaks up the action as Christina suggests all the ways she can hurt herself for others. Such as standing in fires, eating maggots, and lying down on a train-track to be hit by an oncoming train.
She ends up in a cell once more because of her efforts and is forced to face innumerable horrors and as a result she is tempted into listening to the devil and hurting others. The devil attempts to trick her by pretending he is Jesus but she denies him. A small miracle gives her something to drink and eat, and she is made clean while she prays. The work breaks the fourth wall and the character of Christina is shown as being aware of the audience in another discomfiting moment. There are many references to the bible and the devil continuously appears, and the evil of one man is explained when it is realized that the devil inhabits him.
Christina becomes a speaker on mysticism and is considered a spiritual guide. There is a surprising lightness to some of the pain that Christina endures for others. But there are heartfelt comments about the importance of hope, something she offers people.
Father Godfrey reappears wanting Christina, and monologues about the importance of serving the church.
There is an interesting back and forth when Christina and another character discuss, using different passages from the bible, whether violence is permissible and under what circumstances it might be.
She is then put on trial for all of her actions, most of the accusations are lies, and misunderstandings and she is found to be a demon who stands in the way of the church’s work, an irony because of how desperate she is to fulfill the instructions of Jesus. A ghost appears to help her out of her adversity. She is presented with visions of purgatory and shortly later is to be hung.
Her final act is an appeal before she dies, begging that she be able to take on the suffering of others to save them from pain. But she cannot be hung, the rope burns and she managed to stand before the gathered crowd, warning those present with deep passion about how sinners must repent to find peace.
An older Christina lives a life of destitution in a small hovel, and asks the lord to take her. Only much later, when she is even older, and a young man from earlier in the story is now a priest, speaks with her. Christina says that they are both called by God to be who they are.
And she continues to suffer, laying herself before another oncoming train, because she feels like she must take the pain for others which no one else will take. And right before she could share the day of God’s return she dies. She comes back one last time to share the day, and then finally dies for the third and final time.
The story is summed up when a man who Christina knew grew up to become a priest and friend of Christina’s says that her life was one interested in penance and, ultimately in redemption.
A passage in the bible, Matthew 5: 44 reads, “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” This quote is central to the screenplay, because it is a story interested in redemption, hope and forgiveness for others, even if it might seem like they don’t deserve it. And Christina reiterates this point when she says that, “there is something good deep in all of us.”
An experienced theatrical director, producer, dramaturge, and performer Demitra Papadinis wrote her screenplay when she penned The Wonderful. She was present to answer questions about the script and give some insight into why it was written.
An expert in staging Jacobean, and Shakespearean productions she was proud to point out to the audience that, “It incorporates a lot of Shakespearean conventions into a film script.” But it’s sort of like Shakespeare in modern dress. Here we have a medieval world but with modern dress and modern technology.”
She pointed out elements that stood out for her that were in some way Shakespearean, “There is an obvious juxtaposition of high and low humour.” And she explained how it came to be.
Said Papadinis, “This was started in 2015. I’m still working on it. I listened to other writers here talking about noble reasons behind why they’re writing it, ‘I saw this injustice and have to do something about it. This was not true for me. I was very sick at the time and couldn’t do much and in her boredom chose to write a screenplay.”
A lot of the action that takes place she says, “…is out of medieval tradition and there are medieval stories about the devil taking on the form of Jesus. The breaking of the fourth wall is also a Shakespearean convention.”
She was asked if she thought this script could work as a play and she explained that she had considered that.
“It most certainly could be made into a play as long as you don’t mind the hokey effects. Like when Christina has to levitate, we’d have to use the chair and ropes.”
She then spoke about the reception of the script. “Some think this is a spiritual or religious play but I’ve never said that it was before. This work is either universally loved or universally hated. It never gets a C+ it either gets an A or an F. And the people who don’t like it say they don’t get the blending of new and old, they say, ‘we don’t get it. What’s happening?’ And I tell them it’s Shakespeare in modern dress.”
Later that day at screenings at the Carlton Cinema there were three films screened which worked to examine life, love and loss.
Organic Love Stories a film from Turkey presented short vignettes of love in its many forms. Like with the other films, Create and Erase by Canadian director Matthew Lupino and another Turkish film The Two Million, co-director, writer and producer, Derin Baratka it fits perfectly into the nights films of “The Meaning of New Beginnings.”
The director of Organic Love Stories, Alpgiray M.Ugurlu spoke about how he chose to break the story up into different parts instead of telling one single narrative because he wanted to show the multiplicity of love and all its different forms.
Famous Turkish actress Sarah Henesey who starred in the film also spoke about love being a universal theme which everyone could relate to.
Basically all of the scenes involve only two people, man and a woman, all in different stages of their relationships, but all of these different stories are tied together by the common thread of arranged marriages, and a deeper, probing exploration of love. Two people travel together in a car and their relationship is slowly revealed like the places they drive by, and it begins to become clear that these two are only interested in the money that marriage will provide them, and this is just one detour along the path of their already mapped out futures, in which marriage is nothing but a forgotten signpost left far behind them on the road to new futures.
Humour is an inherent part of the film working its way into all of the scenes in one way or another, and the seriousness and importance of love is never made particularly dramatic. Such is the case in a fight between a man and a woman which turns out in a surprising twist to be nothing more than two patients in some sort of mental institution acting out the roles of partners, their own relationship having been arranged in the most clinical of matters. And yet the two patients argue they should stay together and that they are happy.
Musicians, artists, a man who deals in fried chicken, and one who doesn’t feel a need to sleep all have their narratives told in short vignette format as love begins for some, ends for others, and leaves open worlds of endless possibilities for the rest.
And the meaning of new beginnings is revealed through a look at these films individually but also as a whole, and the meaning it seems is that one must take the new beginnings, embrace them and live for them. A father, whose perfect life has been eroded and ruined by time in Create and Erase, sees hope in the beginning of his son’s life. He sees a chance for something better, and where his story might be over in a way, his sons is only just starting.
People bare their souls in first meetings in sometimes successful ways, but also only to meet disappointment and rejection. Different intermediaries set up people and love becomes this 50-50 flip of a coin wherein the audience has no idea how things are going to work out. It’s a fascinating look at what it means to love someone, if there is ever really a thing as true love, if love has a cost, and what people will do when love is a mutual agreement born out of some external necessities, but then again, is that not, in some ways, what love and its corollary, marriage are? Arrangements without intermediaries, love without interference. It sort of raises the question of how different arranged marriages, as presented in the film, are different from any other sort of marriage. Perhaps, like the inmates in the institution we’re simply playing the roles assigned to us going along because we have to.
One of the most powerful moments in the film The Two Million is when, during art therapy, a woman presents a picture of her house which is destroyed and she renders the image of it totally in black colours, showing how the house itself as a physical entity is not just destroyed, but with its destruction, all that it represents, the hope, the security and safety are lost as well. But in her drawing, off to the side, is the bright colours such as green to represent the old Syria of her past and the great home she once had and hopes to have again. In the displaced and disrupted lives of these refugees there is so much uncertainty, but the thought that maybe these medical practitioners who find themselves unable to work, might be able to start anew in a different place, or one day return home, is a dream for a new beginning that makes the endings just a little bit easier.
And related to both of these is again the film Create and Erase which in its short length and no dialogue manages to show one’s relationships in life are not always joyous things and that hopeful new beginnings will often come after sad and hard endings. But there is a reasoning to them, a meaning behind new beginnings, and ReelHeART by screening these films individually and together, highlight the fact that life is both beginnings and endings and it takes real heart to accept this and live your life despite that.