Previews: SCORPIO MOON at Studio Mile-Ex

“There’s something very specific,” says Werona Swetshwelo, “about the way Montreal looks.”

Written by Montreal’s Adjani Poirier, Scorpio Moon is set in an unnamed city of low rent and high culture, where young artists have the economic space to live and create with a utopian freedom, where an abandoned warehouse hosts a reckoning between two close friends about the aftermath of an incredible betrayal.

“It was not a stretch to relate to the characters,” Bélizaire tells me. The questions presented in the work — questions about the tension created by boundaries and intimacy, the requirements of resilient community and the need to honour ourselves — these were things she had thought about “for years.”

Cameron Grant explains that the narrative is not about an easy sort of conflict, and that in fact the work presents a narrative where, as is almost always the case in real conflict, people are not always their best selves. “It was exciting to find moments where the characters did stray,” Grant explains. “They actually say mean things, hurtful things, they bring the baggage in — you don’t know exactly whether they’ll actually work through it.”

“The play does a good job,” explains Schon, “of dealing with the fact that conflict resolution is messy as hell.”

When I ask about why this is an important message now — at this time in culture and in history — Swetshwelo elaborates that in this time of profound conflict, it’s important to stay focused on what we all have in common, as well as the skills and strategies that can actually allow for forward momentum.

“We all care about people,” she says. “[In conflict,] we advocate for our people. But we all care about people. We can get into conversations that are messy without fighting or being mean.”

“How do we make our lives as artists work?” Murdoch asks. Perhaps we can start with saying the hard things.

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