Photography by Todd McClellan
Canadian Living Magazine talks to award-winning producer and director Veronica Tennant about the one-hour performance documentary she has created based on the play Body & Soul.
CL: What interested you about 13 women over age 45 who were not professional actors yet were starring in a play about their own lives and experiences?
VT: I have always greatly admired playwright and director Judith Thompson, and it has been absorbing to experience the depth of the play and its progression; how mature women have such resilience and textured pasts and presents, and ultimately the courage to reflect on their stories and share them.
CL: As a former prima ballerina – a profession that one can only do, or is only allowed to do, up until a certain age – what did you learn from Body & Soul?
VT: My personal philosophy is to live in the present tense. This means embracing and grappling with the forks in the journey as well as the knives. It also means joy, zest and spontaneity. What I discovered was the resilience of these women, their openness and their tensile strength of vulnerability. What amazed me, and continues in every step of my editing process, was the quality of their stage work. They were not professional actors, but they gave their stage performances the hallmarks of the craft: integrity, consistency and communication with simple humanity. Professionals take years to come to this point, and not all achieve it to the degree that each member of the cast of Body & Soul did.
CL: What can viewers expect when they watch your piece on CBC?
VT: It is about transformation, the over-arching strength of Body & Soul. The play, and the ideas driving it, tapped a nerve in the public in terms of interest and response – standing ovations every night and unprecedented sold-out attendance. In a one-hour show on television, I aim to distill and deepen what Judith so brilliantly gave to the theatre audience, combining the often raw discoveries and revelations in the process of creating the play with the remarkable polish and honesty of the performances.
The television show will be multilayered: wit, grit and beauty. The play was shot in high definition, and the months of auditions, writing and rehearsing were shot by my wonderful codirector-cinematographer, Anita Doron, in a documentary format. Judith described to the women how the making of the play was like quilting, and this is exactly the metaphor I have always used for my style of filmmaking: visually appealing, multilayered, dense and probing.
CL: Why do you think it will engage viewers?
VT: It's relevant and riveting – and make no mistake, this is entertainment. Call it artistic reality TV! It's important to remember that with Judith’s deft guidance, each of these brave women wrote her own material. Their personalities are engaging and their stories searingly truthful. We, as viewers, can relate to each of the women and are provoked to think of our own experience.
These women are all singular achievers: leaders, mothers, activists and, above all, survivors. They illustrate with scars and smiles, hurts and triumphs, a quintessentially Canadian composite of personal stories. Their narratives are harrowing, their words are authentic, their laughter infectious, and their combined voices resonate.
Read more about Body & Soul here.
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Canadian Living applauds Dove for all the work they have done to get the message out that aging is a beautiful thing.
