Judith Thompson is determined to drive a reimagination of the beauty of aging women and she couldn't be less concerned about selling a few bars of soap in the process.
The renowned homegrown playwright will premiere an adventurous new play in Toronto entitled Body & Soul at the Distillery District's Young Centre for the Performing Arts on Saturday, which has sparked a measure of unease in the theatre community.
The production, which features 12 "real women," that is to say, non-actors 45 to 78 years old, telling an interwoven tale of their real-life experiences, was commissioned by soap producer Dove as part of the company's Campaign for Real Beauty (an award-winning ad campaign) and bears a prominent corporate stamp that is bound to inspire skepticism in theatre purists.
Thompson, 53, remains undaunted by potential detractors and has gone so far as to call the production "the most gratifying and illuminating creative work I have done in my 30-year career" - no mean claim, given her two Governor-General's Awards for drama and her status as an Officer of the Order of Canada.
"It's obvious that theatre has always had sponsorship. Shakespeare was sponsored by the monarchy. When you read his plays, there's clearly pandering, because he had to pander to them so that his theatre would survive. There's no pandering here," she said.
Thompson said she hopes that the production will help aging women feel better about themselves and understand that beauty comes from life's accumulated experiences.
But Rick Miller felt a mixture of fascination and unease when he heard of the Dove project. He is artistic director of WYRD Productions in Toronto, which has been developing new, multidisciplinary theatre since 1995, and author of numerous plays including Bigger than Jesus and Hardsell, which examines advertising and "the commodification of everything."
He said he expects Thompson has created a good theatre piece and will reserve judgment until he has seen the play and the "presence" Dove's brand has at the theatre - but he thinks it a forbidding omen for the future. "I am very nervous about this. I'm not sure this is the production that actually crosses the line, but I think that it's not far off. I think this sort of invasion of the theatre could happen very quickly if we don't pay attention," he said.
Dove Canada's marketing partner, ad agency Ogilvy & Mather Canada, first proposed creating a theatre piece about beauty and aging as part of Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty, which launched in 2004.
Dove Canada's marketing manager, Alison Leung, said Ogilvy targeted the theatre as a way to give a voice to women over 45, a group their research suggests has chronically poor body image and feels underrepresented in media and culture.
Early in the search for a playwright, Leung said Dove and Thompson forged an immediate bond during the first phone call. She signed on 18 months ago, after overcoming a momentary hesitation at the idea of working with non-actors, because of her excitement about the idea of crafting a script out of ordinary women's true-life stories told in their own words.
She eventually cast a diverse group of 12 women out of about 5,000 who wrote letters to Dove, all of whom have put their lives on hold to participate in rigorous rehearsals and workshops.
Thompson describes the play as a gamble, the kind of new direction she constantly seeks. She has been invigorated by feedback from the cast members about their own roles and the "liveness" of a script that was still being tweaked on the fly at a rehearsal late last week.
"It's about courage, because they know that to tell these stories, some of which are very harrowing, is really healing. And what Dove wants is for women to feel good about aging," she said.
She mixes her faith in Dove's intentions with candour about the company's obvious marketing goals, admitting that "it really is about is brand loyalty," and she concedes that Dove was "very generous," giving her everything she needed to stage a successful show, though she was not specific about its financial contributions. Leung declined to discuss either the specifics of the show's budget or Thompson's compensation, calling it "a marketing investment from Dove."
But Thompson remains adamant that Dove's role has been slight and she has never been pressed to compromise.
"Dove has been as arm's length from this creation as the Canada Council is from any project it supports, only asking that the performers be real women with no stage experience, and that I explore the second act of a woman's life," she said.
Miller questions the comparison, arguing while the Canada Council has a mandate to support the arts, Dove's mandate cannot be other than increasing market share. He points to a controversy that surfaced late last year when observers noticed that Unilever, the multi-billion-dollar company that owns Dove, also owns the fragrance and cosmetics brand Axe, which is famous for targeting young men with its sexualized advertising portraying slender bodies.
"Dove tells us to talk to our daughters before the beauty industry does. Well, they are the beauty industry," he said.
Thompson brushes such concerns aside. "I don't care if ultimately they hope to sell soap with it, the soap's fine. That's completely irrelevant because what this is about is me believing in the value of the lives and stories of older women."
Body & Soul opens Saturday and continues through May 17 at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 55 Mill St. ( or 416-866-8666).