Absurdist at heart, Here We Go faces life's final act with humour and sense of beauty
Western Gold Theatre finds unique paths through the mysteries of Caryl Churchill’s innovative play on aging and dying
The cast of Here We Go. Photo Colleen Bayati.jpg
Western Gold Theatre presents Caryl Churchill’s Here We Go at the PAL Studio Theatre from May 8 to 25
DIRECTOR KATHRYN BRACHT INVITES the audience to reconsider the process of aging and dying, and even to find beauty in it, through Western Gold Theatre’s production of Here We Go.
Written by Caryl Churchill, Here We Go travels through three main concepts: aging, dying, and death. The triptych-like play has three scenes—the first employing dialogue, the second focused on monologue, and the third acted out in silence.
In the first section of the play, characters talk to one another at a funeral reception about the person who has died. Next, a performer gives a monologue about—and possibly from—the afterlife. And in the final part, a caregiver helps an elderly man cycle slowly and repetitively through dressing and undressing. Churchill’s script approaches these heavy topics while weaving in comedic aspects. Over a taut 45 minutes, Here We Go offers profound perspectives on mortality and the fragility of life.
Churchill’s original work gives little or no direction, providing only the script with no designated characters or descriptions. The nature of the first scene’s dialogue means that the creative team can choose who says what. Bracht, who also acts and runs the theatre department at the University of Regina, was tasked with filling in the gaps of the piece.
“On the one hand, it’s really liberating, and on the other hand, it can also be really terrifying,” the theatre artist tells Stir. “Because you’re creating kind of your own pathway. I joked with the cast that this is the kind of play where you could chop up all the lines in that first scene and you could throw them on the floor and you could say, ‘Everybody picks up three to four lines and those are the lines you’re going to say and we will create your character’s narrative based on those lines.’”
Kathryn Bracht. Photo by Peter Scoular
In Western Gold Theatre’s version of the play, there are two casts, each adding its own unique spin to the play’s scenes, creating two different endings.
“We are trying to encourage people to come twice because it is worth seeing twice,” says Bracht.
Churchill, considered one of Britain’s greatest living playwrights, gives her writing multiple layers, making it challenging for actors to navigate. “For the actors, it’s such a test of mental agility and concentration,” Bracht says.
When it came to the world-building aspect of the piece, Bracht was inspired by artists like surrealist painter René Magritte. Magritte’s work invokes absurdism, something that Bracht hopes Glenn MacDonald’s set reveals as well.
Adding to the atmosphere and the innovative structure is original music by Torquil Campbell, frontman of the indie band Stars.
After each performance of Here We Go, Bracht says, there will be a kind of “second act” in which audience members are welcome to come back into the theatre to talk with actors, assistant director Hazel Eason, and the director herself.
“It’s an opportunity for people to come in and respond to it,” she says. “Even the conversations in rehearsal have been really fulsome and very personal. It just speaks to something that I think we don’t often really talk about.”
While Here We Go works with challenging themes, Bracht hopes that after viewing the play the audience will see the beauty in the process of aging and dying and feel more comfortable discussing it all.
“Death is something we all face. It is something that is beautiful and full of mystery. It’s hard, but also there’s humour in that journey,” Bracht says. “It’s part of life, people feel a little more emboldened to have conversations about it, conversations about their own experience, about their own fears, about their own release when a loved one or somebody close to them is passing.” 
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