What You Won’t Do For Love stars Sturla Alvsvaag (left), Michelle Mohammed (right) and, yes, David Suzuki and wife Tara Cullis as themselves.Dahlia Katz/Supplied
There are two David Suzukis.
There’s the one you might recognize from CBC, the bespectacled scientist who hosted The Nature of Things for more than four decades, and who last year warned it’s “too late” to win the fight against climate change.
The other Suzuki is sunnier. He lights up when he talks about his grandchildren, wakes up early and enjoys exercising. He follows American football.
He’s the Suzuki who, when asked to portray himself in a new play, eventually said yes.
What You Won’t Do For Love, created by Why Not Theatre and touring across Ontario until March 25, offers audiences a chance to meet both Suzukis: the famous climate activist and the gentler family man.
He’s joined onstage by his wife, award-winning author and fellow environmentalist Tara Cullis, as well as actors Miriam Fernandes and Sturla Alvsvag (another real-life couple, though Michelle Mohammed occasionally steps in for Fernandes).
For 90 minutes, the four performers discuss the things that matter to them – of course, yes, climate change, but also, crucially, each other. As such, the prevailing theme of Suzuki’s stage debut, directed by Ravi Jain and Fernandes, isn’t hopelessness or grave concern – it’s love.
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“I had no idea what the whole theatre process was like,” says Suzuki, who will turn 90 on March 24. “I’ve been stunned by the intimacy of it, the emotional response that comes out of it. My forte is giving a speech, and I can give a speech and people will cry. But this is very different – the response is quite moving. We need to have that kind of emotional response to the issues now.”
Suzuki is quick to clarify that he and Cullis feel a gamut of emotions related to climate change. “We’re depressed,” he says with a hollow laugh. “But what’s saved us as a couple is that when I’m really down, she’s there to pick me up and vice versa. We keep each other going.”
What You Won’t Do For Love came about when Jain, the 2025 Siminovitch Prize laureate and artistic director of Why Not Theatre, received Suzuki’s e-mail address from a mutual colleague. Jain’s work spans a vast range of genres, styles and scopes, and he’s spent much of his career working with non-actors onstage. After Jain’s production of Sea Sick, another play about climate change co-directed with Franco Boni, he was interested in creating a new show about the environment.
“I thought we’d do Life of Galileo, because that’s all about people not trusting science, and I thought that would be interesting with David,” he says. “I e-mailed him and he was like, ‘No, I’m not going to memorize lines, I’m way too old.’”
But Jain kept pushing, pitching Suzuki a new play about Cassandra, a Greek goddess given the gift of prophecy, but cursed with never being believed. Suzuki thought that idea was “brilliant,” says Jain, but ultimately, the show they created together was inspired by Suzuki’s book Letters to My Grandchildren – Suzuki performs with a script in his hand, so there are no lines to memorize.
What You Won’t Do For Love was staged just once in 2020 before the pandemic shut down live performances in Canada. Jain turned the show into a film in 2021, and the live version has been revived for short tours and one-off engagements ever since.
Suzuki and Cullis appear in a video during a scene in the play. Says Cullis: “A play is a piece of cake – you have the script right there. If you trust the script, you don’t have to think about refining it.”Dahlia Katz/Supplied
“They taught us my three favourite words: Trust. The. Script,” says Cullis. She and Suzuki talk over each other in the way only long-married couples can. At one point during our meeting, they take on the roles of interviewers themselves, asking questions and making jokes as if they’re on a late-night talk show.
“When you’re giving a public speech, you’re always thinking, ‘How’s it going over?’” says Cullis. “It’s exhausting. A play is a piece of cake – you have the script right there. If you trust the script, you don’t have to think about refining it.”
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Not everything in the show came easily to Suzuki. A sequence that sees the performers dance together felt “so contrived” at first, he says.
“I felt really awkward doing it. It seems so corny. But the audience responds to it every time,” he says.
Then again, Suzuki and Cullis have long searched for new ways to speak out about climate change, from broadcast opportunities to books and speaking engagements. While a play might not have been at the top of the couple’s list of persuasive tactics, they say What You Won’t Do For Love has worked, and they’ve seen their message land with audiences in real time.
“We’ve been married for 53 years,” says Cullis, “so when people come along with ideas for David to do, I’ve always wondered what could go wrong, and who I can trust. Whereas David has always said, ‘Great, you want to help get the word out a different way? Terrific.’”
“Tara’s very protective,” says Suzuki. “I told Ravi, ‘If you can talk her into it, I’ll do it.’ And to my amazement, she was in.”
For Suzuki – our culture’s version of Cassandra, as Jain puts it – the environmental situation is dire. Life as we understand it will some day end: He’s certain of that.
But even something as simple as a 90-minute play, Suzuki says, could provide a blueprint for how we as a human race survive the years to come. It’s not just an outreach initiative, but a way to activate both halves of audiences’ brains, and to stretch the capacity of his own dual selves.
“Civilization as we know it is going to disappear, for sure,” he says. “But the question to me is, are we going to revert to a Mad Max situation? Or are we going to come together as a community and hunker down together, and take care of each other? That’s why we’re doing this – to help people feel just a little more resilient and prepared.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Sea Sick was a Why Not Theatre production. The show was co-directed by Ravi Jain and Franco Boni. The article was also updated to clarify that What You Won’t Do For Love was inspired by David Suzuki's book Letters to My Grandchildren.