Robyn Read, U of Guelph
Witnessing the Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Monsters:The Transmogrification of Judith Thompson’s Capture Me

For this year’s ACTR conference, I will be presenting a paper on the transmogrification of, and within, Judith Thompson’s latest play Capture Me. This paper investigates the haunting inspiration for the original script and the reasons behind the revisions. The scenes that depict rage, trauma and terror were workshopped, rewritten and repositioned right up until opening night; in order to effectively explore how a person commits an act of violence and “loses their human shape,” the play itself had to transform. The mainstream media edits crimes, commodifying news bites as short, shocking pieces that satisfy a spectator’s taste without overwhelming them. As a playwright/director, Judith Thompson had room to experiment with what is heard, seen and shown when portraying acts of, and reactions to, violence. What I experienced in the workshop process was the theatre as a classroom: personal and political discussions functioned like seminars as the text was reexamined, the forces behind both perpetrators and victims in the script renegotiated. Judith’s work transcends beyond a simple binary of good and evil to illuminate a more controversial perspective, questioning whether we are all versions of monsters; as husbands, friends, fathers and mothers, rage lives within all of us. My intention is to lend my experience working on Capture Me to an examination of the different ways of writing, teaching and witnessing acts of violence.