Lion in the Streets

Lion in the Streets is a two-act play by award-winning Canadian playwright Judith Thompson and was workshopped as the first Public Workshop Project at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, Canada in May 1990.^[1] It was then produced in its now published form one month later at the duMaurier Theatre Centre, also in Toronto, as part of the duMaurier World Stage Theatre Festival. Music for the production was composed and performed by Bill Thompson.

Its central character is the ghost Isobel, a nine-year-old Portuguese girl who is searching for her killer by observing and occasionally interacting with her neighbors seventeen years after her murder, revealing their dark, horrific, emotional, and very private experiences.

Lion in the Streets was published in 1992 by Playwrights Canada Press.

Characters

There are twenty-eight or twenty-nine characters with speaking parts of varying lengths. The original ensemble was composed of four women and two men who roughly split the roles up as follows (there is some confusion in the Playwrights Canada Press printing, as some character names in the initial list do not actually exist in the play, and some characters who do speak are omitted entirely):

Women:

• Isobel
• Nellie, Laura, Elaine, Christine, Sherry
• Rachel (who is also Rose for two pages), Lily, Rhonda, Ellen, Scarlett
• Sue, Jill, Joanne, Joan (an optional character)

Men:

• Scalato, Timmy, George, Maria, David, Rodney, (Edward?), Ben
• Martin, Bill, Isobel's Father, Ron, Father Hayes, Michael, (Edward?)

Plot

    The story starts with Isabel's ghost wandering around lost, in a play ground. "Is my house but is not my house is my street but is not my street my people is gone I am lost." (Thompson, Lion in the Streets, line 11-13)[2] A women named Sue comes to her rescue from other kids picking on her. Before Isobel follows Sue home she sees her father, and recalls that he is dead. After Sue's son Tommy makes some depressing comments, Isobel follows Sue on to a dinner party where her husband is. Sue calls him to come home and find out he's been having an affair with a woman at the party. Isobel realizes Sue's inability to care for her and calls to the audience for someone to take her home. 
    She stays with the dinner party hostess, where she witnesses a flash back scene from when Isobel's mother, Maria, found out about Isobel's Fathers suicide. As Maria tells of her vision of her husband dying, Isobel dramatically acts out her father falling onto the train tracks. As Laura goes on to a day care meeting, she gets into a heated conversation with Rhonda, the child care provider. After all the drama, Isobel points her finger at each member of the meeting and "shoots" them individually, though real shots are heard. 
    She clings to Rhonda's feet as they move onto the next scene, where Rhonda meats a friend, Joanne, at a bar. Joanne shares that she has cancer, and asks Rhonda to help her plan out an Ophelia like suicide. As they leave the bar Isobel realizes her purgatorial state, realizes she is long dead and wants to go to heaven. She follows the bartender, David, to confession with his childhood priest. Through confession from the sinner and the priest, David realizes he is as well long dead.
    In act two Isobel turns from looking for help, to warning the people around her of the lion in the streets. She's now looking to protect rather than be protected. It opens up with her in a play ground again, where she is warning the people around that the Lion is coming. She follows Christine from the park to an interview with a young women with cerebral palsy, named Scarlet. When Scarlet shares of a private topic, she is betrayed by Christine who threatens to publish it. Scarlet begins to provoke Christine, who then attacks and kills Scarlet. Isobel calls her a "Slave" of the Lion, and follows her to the next scene where she hopes to find the Lion. Christine's Assistant, Rodney, after an unpleasant conversation with her, has an unexpected visitor. Micheal is an old friend from middle school who brings up their youthful experimentations and accuses him of being queer.
    They fight, and Rodney "kills" Micheal. After the Michael character leaves Rodney gives a monologue about his interactions with Micheal growing up.  Sherry, his coworker busts in trying to calm him down and gives him some chocolate, before she goes home. Isobel watches a conversation with her boy friend quickly escalate into a fight where he makes her relive a rape she encountered in years past. He makes her say that it was her fault, to satisfy his own fantasy's. The scene ends with her continuing to talk about preparing for their wedding. 
    Her and Isobel then walk over to the graveyard where Ben, Isobel's murderer, (a.k.a. the Lion) is sitting. Sherry lays down at her grave, and as Ben continues to tell his story of justification of why he killed Isobel, she confronts him. She tells her part of the story and has an internal battle between vengeance and forgiveness. Forgiveness wins, and she tells  Ben "I love you", and she asks him for her life back. Now coming on as an adult, Isobel tells the audience that though he took her heart, her heart was never silent, and she urges the audience to take back their lives.

Background

After 1953 there was a large influx in Portuguese immigrants in Canada. The Portuguese people moved to Canada because of economic opportunity, under employment in their home country, and to escape political oppression. Sixty-nine percent (69%) of Portuguese Canadians live in Ontario, and many are in Toronto. Although we do not know many details about Isobel's origins, we do know that the story is placed in Toronto. Toronto has a little neighborhood or district called Little Portugal, where the Portuguese cultural still lives today. Most Portuguese immigrants started off as farm hands or railroad workers in rural communities. But as cities became more developed, Portuguese immigrants started searching out other jobs. By the 70' were molded into society and taking higher jobs such as teachers, lawyers, and civil servants. ^[3] In Lion in the Streets we know that Isobel's father worked on road construction. (Wadsworth, page 1584) All we know about her mom was that she was a house wife, and possible did house work for work. By Isobel's strong accent, most likely her family has not lived in Canada for very long. You can see how hard her life was, from her mothers perspective, and her father suicide. Judith Thompson really captures the struggle of life as an immigrant, just the same as she capture the other struggles in life of all the other characters through out the play.

Themes and Ideas

Lion in the streets is not a fun or easy play to read or watch. It cuts deep, and hits a lot of sore spots for everyone. But that's truly where the power of her play is. Written right before the turn of the century, where problems were hidden, and these issues weren't talked about, this play made its mark. It deals with issues from almost every walk of life, and talks about the things that were (are) taboo.

As Isobel encounters so much evil and violence within the city, Judith Thompson shows this sort of hidden side of the city. The Lion that lurks among us, that only Isobel is able point out. The perspective of the innocent immigrant child gives a political charge as a solution against this intercity violence. Looking away from this "Upper class, male-centered, high-art paradigms... that locates freedom and power for a lower-class, female, immigrant-child."^[4]

Criticism

Criticism is hard to measure for this play, or really any, because it is so dependent on the cast, director, and really the time it's performed in. Everybody will have their own take on it. Some looks at the almost Dream-like nature of this play and except it in all it's sense of non-realism. "Besides Isobel's ghostly presence, other aspects of the play are surreal as well; it begins with a circus-like dance in which masked actors swirl around the open stage... frightening, seemingly on the edge of losing control. Like the lion of the title, there's something wild here in the midst of apparent civilization, something untamed in a very dangerous way".^[5] Though some of the situations may be real, most are very unlikely. Thompson definitely took these issues to their extremes. Some would say it worked well, and to prove a point. But others have different opinions. "If the theater industry were to emulate film and start doling out its annual worst-of awards, then “Lion in the Streets” could sweep all categories. Everything about this show, from script to acting to sound design, is so aggressively inept that the failure becomes a kind of achievement. In the absence of awards, the best we can do is catalog the disasters and hope they’ll be remembered as warnings."^[6]

Inspiration

Judith Thompson wrote this play from the perspective of an observer. She got her inspiration from people around her, in an urban setting. From a small idea, it snowballed into this strong and powerful play that it is today. "I thought I just can’t bear some giant narrative, somebody taking this immense journey. So I thought, well, write a bunch of little plays, like two women in a restaurant and one says, ‘Guess what?’ I had no idea what it was going to be. It was an improvisation" (Zimmerman interview 188). ^[7]

A play that has influenced the style of scene-to-scene stories of Lion in the Streets is La Ronde. La Ronde was written by German playwright, Arthur Schnitzler. It is set in 1890's Vienna, and is a dramatically structured play consisting of ten interlocking scenes between pairs of lovers. Each of its ten characters appears in two consecutive scenes, with the Whore appearing twice. Lion in The Streets is similar to this play in the way it is set up. From each scene in the Lion in the Streets, one character moves along to he next scene. The difference between La Ronde and Lion in the Streets is firstly that Lion in the Streets isn't strictly about lovers (one people with something in common, i.e. Relationships.), also that there is one character (Isobel) who is a "Main Character" and follows each consecutive scene.

Awards

In 1991, Judith Thompson received a Floyd S. Chalmers Award for Lion in the streets. This is an award given to plays produced by Canadian playwrights and performed in the Toronto area. This award is prized at $250,000, and is named after Floyd Chalmers, the editor, publisher, and philanthropist.

Adaptations

In 2002, Ed Gass-Donnelly directed a 6-minute film, Dying Like Ophelia, based on a scene between the characters Joanne and Rhonda.

References

External links

• Lion in the Streets at the Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia