The Chemical Valley Project passes the mic - but loses the plot at Theatre Passe Muraille GlobeArts
a new documentary play from Broadleaf Theatre now on at Theatre Passe Muraille, is like following one environmentally conscious man down an anxious late-night Google hole.
That frightening footage leads Wong to meet up with the pair of young activists who shot it, from the nearby Aamjiwnaang First Nation. Lindsay Beze Gray and Vanessa Gray take him on a tour of the area by school bus – and he hears stories of children visiting hospitals unable to breathe and of buried asbestos seeping up through the ground into a nearby park. He learns some shocking statistics about the rate of miscarriage and stillbirth in the community.
But Wong – whose play takes the form of an unwaveringly earnest first-person narrative interspersed with recorded video and audio – soon becomes specifically interested in Enbridge’s Line 9. That pipeline runs all the way from Sarnia to Montreal including, he learns, through his old neighbourhood in Scarborough, just a block away from the church he attended as a child and his favourite bubble tea spot.
This is a revelation to Wong and he repeats the line several lines – and, suddenly, it’s as if he’s clicked on the word “decolonization” as the play shifts its attention. The way he continues to segue hither and thither in his script is very influenced by contemporary podcasting , but the end product ends up feeling tangential and superficial.
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