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Uncovering Atlantis
How was the idea of Atlantis born? In November 1993, while the premiere production of Transit of Venus was running at MTC, I walked into McNally-Robinson Bookstore on River Avenue looking for Christmas presents, and picked up a book by Charles Pellegrino called Unearthing Atlantis. This is a book about recent archaeological discoveries on the Greek island of Santorini, and the growing body of evidence suggesting that Santorini was once the fabled island of Atlantis. I bought the book for my father, but before I wrapped it I decided to read a few chapters. Several hours later I was still reading. I knew I'd found the germ of an idea for a new play. I knew it involved a Canadian whose life is transformed by something that happens to him on the island of Santorini. Then I made a costly mistake. I convinced myself I couldn't set the play on Santorini, since I'd never been there. I decided to set the play beside a prairie lake, after the Canadian has returned from Greece. This mistake - an act of artistic cowardice if there ever was one - cost me nearly a year in writing time, and countless hours of frustration and anxiety. I couldn't find the beginning of the play. I couldn't find the story. I couldn't find a way to make Ben, the man I knew the play was about, speak. Then one day, as an exercise to "unstick" my mind, I decided to sit down at the computer and write whatever came into my head. To my surprise, a woman began to speak -a woman whom I recognized immediately as Greek. She spoke fluently, lyrically and urgently, clearly a character to be reckoned with. Then, miraculously, Ben, who'd been silent for so long, began to speak. Then Mircea. Then Ben. I knew then that the play had to be set on Santorini, and that this woman figured strongly in the story. I knew I had to let these two characters tell me their story in their own way. In this way, finally, the play was born. Was Atlantis shaped in any way by the success of Transit of Venus? Only in the sense that I had learned, in writing Transit, how exciting and enlightening it is to explore another culture, another time. With Transit it was the 18th century in France, India, the South Seas. With Atlantis it's modern day Greece, but because of the story I was telling my research took me on a journey back to ancient Minoan Crete. In the last three years I've read dozens of books on Greece, on mythology, archaeology, religion. Last fall I audited a portion of a course at the University of Winnipeg on Ancient Art and Architecture. I made what really felt like a "pilgrimage" to Greece last year, including a week on Santorini checking facts and details. Like the journey I took to write Transit, the journey involved in writing Atlantis has broadened my life. Also, I think, the success Transit has had in Canada and abroad has given me courage to experiment a little in style and form. Having written a successful, classically-structured play, I felt I'd earned the right to "push the envelope" a little, to try something new. As the person closest to this story what excites you about it? While, on one level, Atlantis is a love story, on another level I think it's a play about our relationship with the mystical. It's about a man whose life is transformed by the eruption into it of the sacred. It's about what has been called our "nostalgia for paradise"-- our longing to return to a place of innocence, purity, truth. It's also about the love affair many of us have with Greece. Atlantis is a play for people who love to be told a story. Two characters step onto the stage and spin out their story for us in a way we usually experience only when we turn intimately to a novel. The form of the play is somewhat unusual, at least in English language theatre: two characters telling their story through alternating monologues. It's an experiment of sorts and for this reason, I believe, exciting. I didn't choose this form, initially. I resisted it. But it does have advantages. In traditional theatre, the characters often spend a lot of time concealing the truth about themselves. This is true of good characters, as well as evil ones. As a playwright, you have to engineer events so that the characters are forced, ultimately, to overcome their natural reticence and speak freely. In Atlantis, the characters have no such reticence. They open their hearts to us, in a way so honest and intimate it catches us off-guard - the way we are caught off-guard when a person we don't know well suddenly begins to reveal his or her deepest hopes and disappointments. We're asking audiences to use their imaginations, to build pictures
in their minds as the words of the play roll over them - in much the
way they do when they read a book or listen to a radio play. I hope
audiences will enter into the spirit of the play, "lend us their
ears" and their imaginations -and open up compassionately to
these two remarkable characters and the story they have to tell. 
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