The 1990s controversy over Robert Latimer’s killing his severely disabled daughter inspired Emil Sher to write Mourning Dove – first for radio, then for stage.
“I was commissioned to write the play while working as a story editor on CBC Radio’s Morningside with host Peter Gzowski. I remember being struck by how thick the transcripts of the trial were – the size of small city phone books,” Sher recalled on the phone from his Toronto office.
On Oct. 24, 1993, when Saskatchewan farmer Robert Latimer killed his daughter, Tracy, the debate began. Does a parent have the right to kill a child? Latimer was convinced he did the right thing, since 12-year-old Tracy was suffering from cerebral palsy, weighed 38 pounds and was about to undergo another surgery to relieve pain.
Compelled by broader issues rather than the specifics of Latimer’s case, Sher created Mourning Dove, the fictitious world of the Ramsays – Doug and Sandra, their severely disabled daughter, Tina – and Keith, an intellectually challenged friend of the family employed in Doug’s hardware store.
Although the play is set in a home workshop rather than in a courtroom, once Ramsay takes Tina’s life, which he is convinced is the best thing he can do for her, a trial within the family begins. What Ramsay doesn’t expect is the fallout from his wife and the reaction of Keith, who gives voice to the other side of the argument.
After the CBC radio broadcast in 1996 and broadcasts on Worldplay, an inaugural radio festival heard around the world, Sher, an award-winning playwright, adapted it for stage productions in Ottawa, Kitchener, Halifax and last fall, Vancouver.
Presented by the Ark Collective, Mourning Dove makes its Toronto première on Tuesday, April 7, at 8 p.m. at the Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, directed by Dora Award-winning actor Liza Balkan. Cast members include Steve Cumyn, Vickie Papavs, Colin Doyle and Kimwun Perehinec.
Sher initially resisted adapting the play to theatre. “I didn’t know how I was going to show this young girl on stage, but when I realized I didn’t have to – that she could be created through sound and light, then I worked with Richard Rose [a director and the founding artistic director of Toronto’s Necessary Angel Theatre], and turned it into a stage play.”
Using elements of radio drama – sound and voice – Sher has the audience hear Tina breathing, but she never appears on stage.
“It’s not about showing this handicapped girl,” Sher said. “It’s about how the family copes with Tina’s debilitating disability. It also raises the larger issue: to what extent are we spirit over flesh and what makes us who we are? Is it our bodies as contorted as they may be or is it the soul within? I’m always trying to bring in additional layers to leave the audience thinking.”
What’s Sher currently working on? He’s been commissioned by Joel Greenberg of Studio 180, where Sher is playwright in residence, to write Conviction, about wrongful convictions.
Greenberg’s daughter, Jessica, played Hana in Sher’s adaptation of Karen Levine’s Hana’s Suitcase about 12-year-old Holocaust victim Hana Brady. The play toured Canada and the United States and will be staged in Israel in 2010.
Sher is also weaving documentary footage from Larry Weinstein’s Inside Hana’s Suitcase into interactive webisodes for the upcoming website. Weinstein’s film will be screened at upcoming Toronto festivals.
For information about Sher, visit www.emilsher.com
Mourning Dove previews April 3 and runs April 7 to 19. For tickets, call Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, 30 Bridgman Ave., 416-531-1827.
Weinstein’s film will premiere at Toronto’s Hot Docs Film Fest April 30.
