Hannah Moscovitch takes latest work to infinity and beyond

Hannah Moscovitch's Infinity runs April 1 to May 3

A play about time and theoretical physics may sound daunting, but acclaimed playwright Hannah Moscovitch worked with renowned physicist Lee Smolin –along with a full creative team – to produce one. 

Moscovitch’s Infinity has its world premier at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre on April 1. While the play explores Smolin’s theory of time, outlined in his 2013 book Time Reborn, “the play itself is sort of two stories that are intertwined,” Moscovitch says. “One is the love story between Carmen (Amy Rutherford), who’s a composer, and Elliot (Paul Braunstein), who is a physicist, and that’s intertwined with a sexual history of a young woman named Sarah Jean (Haley McGee).” 

Ross Manson, the artistic director at Toronto’s Volcano Theatre, commissioned the play in 2008. “When Ross Manson originally came to me and said he wanted to write about time, I thought he was a lunatic more or less,” says Moscovitch, who’s originally from Ottawa.

She worked collaboratively with director Manson, choreographer Kate Alton and composer Njo Kong Kie to develop the play over the years. Smolin, billed as the consulting physicist on the project, even wrote an eight-page biography for the character of Elliot, and parts of it have been incorporated into the show. 

Actors including Haley McGee joined the project in spring 2013. “So rarely do you get to live with something and have it kind of percolate for that long,” she says. 

McGee, who’s also an award-winning playwright, thinks the long process lent itself well to Infinity. “It’s a play about a family, and so there is a kind of familiarity that you’re able to build over two years… that is much harder to achieve in a regular three-week rehearsal period.” 

Infinity doesn’t focus only on the nitty-gritty theoretical elements of time; it also looks at how ideologies are passed down between generations – a theme all the more relevant now that Moscovitch is starting a family. 

“It’s in fact a play about how large systems of thought influence who we are and shape who we are and how we think,” Moscovitch says. 

For her, Judaism is one such system. “I think Judaism has informed all my writing just because it’s inextricable from who I am.” 

Her work includes 2007’s East of Berlin, a play that examines the legacy of the Holocaust. Last year, Moscovitch took home the Ontario Trillium Book Award for This is War, about Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan. This makes her the first playwright to collect the province’s top literary prize since its inception in 1987. In 2013, Nobel laureate Alice Munro was the English language winner. “Anytime when you can win an award the year after Alice Munro, you feel good,” Moscovitch says. 

Moscovitch’s career isn’t limited to playwriting – it spans a variety of media. She currently writes for CBC’s original television show X Company, a World War II spy drama that premiered on Feb. 18. Her venture into television is common among playwrights. 

“Television is so alluring because the best storytelling is happening on television, I think,” she says. “There’s very good storytelling in every medium, but TV is just so good today.” 

In February 2014, she made her debut in the opera world after writing the libretto for I Have No Stories To Tell You. It’s an original piece, with music by Lembit Beecher, commissioned by New York City’s Gotham Chamber Opera and performed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In theatre, she’s currently working on a three-part adaption of Ann-Marie MacDonald’s novel Fall on Your Knees for the Shaw Festival. 

Earlier this year, her play What a Young Wife Ought to Know opened in Halifax. And, she’ll likely keep making revisions on Infinity even as the play goes into previews. 

“Hannah needs to watch it with an audience and see what’s landing, what’s working what needs to be tweaked,” McGee says. “I like that. It’s very exciting to be part of that process.”

 

Infinity runs from April 1-May 3 at Tarragon Theatre’s Extraspace, 30 Bridgman Ave., Toronto, M5R 1X3. For tickets call 416-531-1827 or visit www.tarragontheatre.com