Review: Positive Thinking and Difficult Choices in Canadian Stage's THE BOOK OF LIFE

Odile Gakire (Kiki) Katese, the Rwandan humanitarian and artist, has brought her voice and wisdom to the Canadian Stage Company this autumn in THE BOOK OF LIFE. Brimming with insight and charm, THE BOOK OF LIFE is also a difficult and provocative piece of political theatre that test the limits of idealism in the face a crushing need for pragmatic thinking.

The title of the play refers to a collection of letters Katese has collected from Rwandans whose lives were touched by the genocide. Katese, it seems, works mostly with Hutu people, giving this piece an unusual (for Canada) twist: it takes the perspective of the perpetrator. Throughout the course of the play, Katese reads aloud a half-dozen letters describing unspeakable violence, many of them written by the children, wives, and siblings of those who committed the acts.

As a performer, Katese is intensely charismatic. She bears not only her own difficult story, but the suffering of hundreds of others with strength and tenacity. It is easy to picture her performing before thousands (which she has) or running an ice cream parlour (which she does). Katese infuses her performance with a great deal of cheer, underlining one of the core themes of the play: the need for hope in the wake of terrible suffering.

As it happens, I find Katese's optimism a bit unnerving, and her philosophy profoundly unsettling. "I don't care about the truth," she explains, "I care about now." Rwanda can't move beyond the genocide if neighbours are afraid of neighbours, blame neighbours for killing their friends and loved ones. Katese started working on THE BOOK OF LIFE because she was "tired of death." So let's stop thinking about death, she urges, let us be cheerful and sing.

Right now, the United States has missiles pointed at Iran. Their ally, Saudi Arabia, is responsible for a humanitarian crisis in Yemen which has withered the bodies of over two million malnourished children. In Venezuela, poverty and corruption threaten thousands more. And it is easy, too easy, to imagine the leaders, the perpetrators, quoting from THE BOOK OF LIFE: "I don't care about the truth..." The people, they hope, will move past their atrocities as cheerfully as Kiki Katese.

Katese herself is aware of this problem, aware of the struggle between I and we, between the personal and the political, between individual justice and collective harmony. She has chosen her side, and it is impossible not to respect her for it, or for the incredible work she has done. Still, as Canada faces the challenge of sorting out its own issues of reconciliation, Katese's philosophy feels, frankly, just too easy.

CANADIAN STAGE's THE BOOK OF LIFE runs through SEPTEMBER 29 at the BERKELEY STREET THEATRE.

For more information or to purchase tickets, visit canadianstage.com

Photo credit: Dahlia Katz