“How do you respond to the news?” Jordan Merkur asks. That’s one of the questions he hopes audiences consider when seeing his production of Donald Margulies’s Tony Award-nominated play Time Stands Still.
After photojournalist Sarah Goodwin (played by Kirstin Rae Hinton) is injured by an improvised explosive device (IED) in Iraq, she goes back to her Brooklyn home with her partner and fellow journalist James Dodd (Jason Jazrawy). In what Margulies has described as a love story, the show follows the couple for one year as they struggle to return to life outside of a war zone.
Merkur first directed Time Stands Still at Toronto’s Fringe Festival in July where it was honoured as a Patron’s Pick. Now magazine lauded the show and recognized its outstanding ensemble cast and direction. To remount it, Merkur formed the TSS (Time Stands Still) Collective with his actors and stage manager. Together they worked to raise money for a full run at Theatre Passe Muraille.
Sam Rosenthal – who plays Sarah’s editor Richard – produced the show with Merkur and the rest of the collective. While they crowdfunded and solicited donations from family and friends, they also got creative and hosted unique events to further engage their prospective audience.
In January, Hinton and Jazrawy – who are a couple both on and off stage – held a murder mystery themed party and in February, Rosenthal hosted a champagne brunch where award-winning Toronto Star journalist Michelle Shepard spoke alongside psychiatrist Dr. Anthony Feinstein, who studies post-traumatic stress disorder.
The event brought in money for the show, but it also made an impact on the actors and guests who heard Shepard and Feinstein reflect on their experiences with foreign conflicts. For Rosenthal, it also changed his perspective on producing theatre. An event such as this, he explains, “Galvanizes people into wanting to see the show move forward.”
Time Stands Still opened on Broadway in 2010 and starred Laura Linney, Eric Bogosian, Brian D’arcy James and Alicia Silverstone. Merkur thinks it’s just as relevant now as it was five years ago.
Journalists today are no longer simply observers in conflict areas. The horrific beheadings of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and Japanese freelancer Kenji Goto, remind us how groups such as the Islamic State target members of the media.
In the play, one of the characters doesn’t understand why some journalists risk their lives when reporting overseas. She talks about how when she reads a magazine story, she just flips the page and is thankful that she lives in the United States. Merkur understands that. “I’m here in Canada and most of my family lives now in Israel,” he says.
Though Merkur visits them, he knows that their lives are much different than his. “They’re dealing with more conflicts than I do living at Carlton and Jarvis,” he explains. “And so, for me, when I hear the news in Israel, or I hear news of what occurred in Paris, or the anti-Semitic actions in places in Europe; what do I do about it?”
Merkur has a history of directing and producing socially relevant work. He graduated with a BFA in theatre from York University in 1985. Before he finished school, he was already producing work in downtown Toronto and started his production company Eclectic Theatre in his graduating year.
He ran Eclectic Theatre for 16 years and earned 12 Dora Award nominations, winning five. Afterwards, he was the artistic director at the Red Barn Theatre in Jackson’s Point, Ont., until it tragically burned down in 2009.
Now, he’s excited for even more people to see Time Stands Still. “A lot of people who are following the stories in the Middle East, or in other places, would find this play quite compelling because,” he says, “it really deals with some of the issues that we have to deal with as people who are consumers of the news.”
Time Stands Still plays at Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace, 16 Ryerson Ave.,until March 29. Tickets can be purchased at the Theatre Passe Muraille Box office, by calling 416-504-7529 or by visiting www.artsboxoffice.ca
