What David Suzuki will do for love

Last week, after David Suzuki warned that the pipelines would “explode” if politicians did not act on climate change, critics were quick to frame the notorious Canadian environmentalist as a gangster, a security threat, even an eco-terrorist.

This week, a new movie, What you won’t do for love, paints a different picture of Suzuki: loving husband, compelling storyteller, and, for the first time, professional actor.

The film, produced by Toronto’s Why Not Theater in association with TO Live and Soulpepper, stars Suzuki and his wife, Tara Cullis, as themselves. Through a series of conversations with a young couple, real-life couples Miriam Fernandes and Sturla Alvsvaag, Suzuki, and Cullis recall the first time they met, recall their adventures in the Amazon, and reflect on their eternal dedication to the planet. What would happen, they ask, if we all loved the Earth as much as we love our spouses, parents, and children?

What you won’t do for love it’s a departure from Suzuki’s usual style, trading its trademark scientific exposition for cute dialogue. Its script emphasis on special effects stems from the fact that it didn’t start out as a movie but as a play.

Several years ago, director Ravi Jain, an award-winning theater artist in Toronto, adapted Dizzy, journalist Alanna Mitchell’s book on the deterioration of the Earth’s oceans, in a one-woman show. Experience showed that theater could be a weapon in the climate crisis. “We are all faced with this impossible task, and I don’t know what the hell we are supposed to do,” says Jain. But I’m good at telling stories. I felt that if I could make a contribution, that would be it. “

After Dizzy, Jain approached Suzuki to star Life of Galileo, a work about a brilliant scientist and a society that refuses to listen to him.

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“It was intriguing,” says Suzuki, who had never acted before. “What Galileo was saying was so outrageous to the collective society. He was a very brave guy. In many ways, the environmentalists who have been speaking for the past 30 years are in the same position. “

But Suzuki objected. He was worried that he would never be able to memorize his lines. “I have enough trouble memorizing pieces to The nature of things, “he says.” Quite a work, I couldn’t even imagine. “

However, a year later, Jain and Suzuki met for coffee in Toronto. The meeting was supposed to last 30 minutes. They ended up chatting for two hours and came up with an informal plan to tell Suzuki’s story on stage, with one condition: Suzuki’s wife, Cullis, would have to be involved. “I thought I would definitely turn it down,” Suzuki laughs. But Cullis, a former Harvard professor, writer and environmentalist, loved the idea.

Jain and Fernandes spent nearly three weeks with Suzuki and Cullis at their home in British Columbia learning about their lives and flipping through old photo albums. “It was a delicious process,” says Suzuki. “All we did was talk about ourselves. Who doesn’t like to talk about themselves? “

Jain was especially captivated by Suzuki’s sense of humor. When Jain told him it might take three years to finish the work, Suzuki said, “You better hurry. I’m 82 years old and I’m going to die soon. “

Jain and Fernandes distilled the conversations into a realistic production that gleefully breaks the fourth wall. The actors read the scripts and acknowledge, midway through the play, that they are creating a play. The approach favors honesty over artifice. “What I really wanted to convey to the audience is what it’s like to spend time with these two people,” says Jain.

When the team premiered the production in Vancouver in February 2020, it became clear that the star of the show was not Suzuki, the celebrated scientist, but Cullis, the behind-the-scenes hero who came up with the idea for the David Suzuki Foundation. and he organized a trip that saved a strip of the Amazon from destruction.

“Much of what I do, she has been the force behind me, holding me or sending me, and she never gets recognition,” says Suzuki. After the show, she adds, “there was a lineup of women who wanted to thank Tara. A woman was sobbing. He could barely speak. “

As it turned out, that was the only live performance by What you will not do for love. The pandemic prevented the play from going on tour in March 2020, so Jain, who had never made a movie before, put together a team to turn the show into a movie.

In many ways, the story is well suited to cinema. The filmed conversations take place not on a stage, but in a variety of intimate settings, in Suzuki and Cullis’s living room, around their dining table, in a back garden, and on a porch with a mountainous view, providing a look at their lives.

What you won’t do for love is available to stream online December 3-19.

Jain is looking forward to a live tour of several Canadian cities in 2022. There’s just one problem: In an effort to minimize their carbon footprint, Suzuki and Cullis no longer fly, so they will need to find another way to travel across the globe. country. .

Nobody said that saving the world through theater would be easy.