Food For Thought (Dionysus in Stony Mountain)

Last Wednesday evening, I had the pleasure of seeing Theatre Projects Manitoba’s presentation of Dionysus in Stony Mountain at the Rachel Brown Theatre in Winnipeg, though the pleasure was not without a little pain.

If I’m seeing a play described as “unabashedly intellectual”, it helps to have a bit of a theoretical background. Luckily, I did (now I can definitely say the U of W Rhetoric degree was well worth the money). I came in with what you might call a “postmodern perspective”, meaning that I do not necessarily need to understand or make sense of everything that goes on, and that there is no right or wrong answer to a question. Along the same line as this perspective is the idea that something is not “high art” unless it is intellectually stimulating, and once again, not completely understood. Steven Ratzlaff’s Dionysus in Stony Mountain deals with some rather weighty issues, and we seem to live in a society where black and white perspectives on issues are sometimes favoured, so my postmodern perspective came in handy.

James Hiebert (Ross McMillan) is an inmate at Stony Mountain Penitentiary who has stopped taking his antipsychotic medication, and Heidi Prober (Sarah Constible) is his psychiatrist, who engages in a philosophical debate with Hiebert, attempts to get him back on his medication, but ultimately agrees with his point of view.

I found the first and second act of the play both left me with more questions than answers, hence the “pain” I refer to (albeit mental rather than physical). In act 1, we learn that Hiebert is fascinated with the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, a philosopher who wrote about something called slave morality. According to Hiebert, slave morality can explain why we often set criminals free after they have served their time or give them lighter sentences, even when they reoffend; many of them have also been victims of abuse at some point in their lives, and because of this, we forgive them to some degree.

The question of “what constitutes a victim?” is one I often think about when I watch the news or read books such as Mike McEntyre’s Journey For Justice, and I agree that criminals can also be considered victims

However, Hiebert argues that this attitude is a mistake because it accounts for why our prisons are so crowded with Aboriginal people. He says that we are only stifling the Aboriginal population, and not allowing them to progress or better themselves by housing many of them in prisons, and we’ve been doing this for hundreds of years. Another good point in my opinion. So what do we do about this? Is the answer a complete reform or abolishment of the prison system? Perhaps, but the play doesn’t address that; after all, it was only two hours.

Hiebert also touches on the topic of Aboriginal assimilation. We often think of residential schools as vehicles for assimilation, but Hiebert argues that this was not the case. He says that government officials took Aboriginal children away from their families, FORCED them to speak English and adopt Christianity; he portrays the schools as vehicles of separation and isolation, rather than assimilation. He points out that Pierre Trudeaux is the only person who actually came up with a vehicle for assimilation, and that was to abolish the Indian Act. Unfortunately, he had to back down because of political pressure from Aboriginal chiefs. Hiebert argues, and I agree, that Trudeaux had the right idea, but does not address how to avoid the pressure that would come about if any assimilation tried to bring about Aboriginal assimilation.

In the second act, we find that Heidi has quit her job because she agrees with Hiebert’s way of thinking. Her Uncle visits from Toronto to check on her, and together they grapple with a number of issues, including “manufactured love.” Heidi says that she had to quit her job because she had to manufacture love and concern for her patients; she admits she did feel the real emotions, but she had to do her job while following a lot of regulations, and had a very minimal amount of freedom to do what she felt was best. Now, Heidi’s only vocation is “friend.” So does this mean prison psychiatrists serve no purpose?

Heidi’s issues in the second act aren’t resolved either, but that is less important. The play provided some food for thought, and entertained me at the same time. I’d say that’s the mark of a fulfilling cultural experience.