Steven Bush is one of Canada's finest actors and his recent return to the stage in Autogeddon is a happy occasion indeed. I lead off with such a superlative judgement because many people are not aware what a fine acting talent he is. Mr. Bush has been around for a few decades now and has carved out a career that has included work with CBC radio, independent film ventures, the smaller theatres and as a respected teacher of theatre arts. Why he has never surfaced as a leading actor with some of this country's major repertory companies has always puzzled me somewhat but I suspect it is more by design than default. You see, Mr. Bush is an artist plagued with that most difficult of professional burdens -- a strong social conscience. And so the niche that he has carved out for himself over the years usually involves dedicating himself to projects that actually have something significant to say about who we are and the times in which we live. His rendition of Autogeddon by the British actor/playwright Heathcote Williams is no exception.
This piece is a good example of what happens when you marry a strong piece of writing with exactly the right actor. Autogeddon was originally written as a poem in 1991 but might better be described as an extended rumination on the history of the automobile and the consequences of the world's love affair with same since its invention in 1895.
And these are just a few of the program notes that lead us into the slaughter and massacre (17 million dead and counting) that each country of the world euphemistically refers to as "life on our nation's highways." The political economy of the automobile might not sound like a very engaging piece of dramatic writing but with Heathcote's imagery and historic scope aided by Bush's stage adaptation, what emerges is a compelling piece of theatre that challenges the status quo and the growing supremacy of the SUV.
Travelling down this perilous road we encounter characters like Henry Ford the auto manufacturer who invented the Model-T in a one-room garage that soon led to the creation of the assembly line. Ford's admiration for Hitler's Germany and his aid to that regime also comes in for scrutiny. Soon we are caught up in an interconnecting web of oil cartels, advertising campaigns, pollution probes, global warming syndromes, and road rage all fueled by that insatiable, gas-guzzling beast the automobile.
And the wonderful thing about it all is that what could easily be written off as deep ecological cant, suddenly takes on a form and cogency that invites us to renew our commitment to the whole idea of a clean environment without guilt or shame for being less of an activist than we should have been over the years.
Much of this spiritual renewal is of course due to the skill with which Steven Bush presents the material and guides us along the careening one-way streets and eight lane freeways of Autogeddon. One person shows that require an actor to present dialog between two or three characters and then quickly slip into another character sometimes become tedious simply because the actor must forsake character for caricature, only because there is so little time that we stay with each one. Somehow Bush seems to avoid this trap as he fleshes out numerous personalities throughout this collision course of twisted metal and dismembered body parts.
Leaving the theatre, my spouse and I smugly produce our subway tokens for a safe journey home while pondering whatever happened to the idea of mass transit, anyway?.
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