Patricia Darbasie in Donna Orbits The Moon, Northernm Light Theatre. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Something weird is happening to the woman we meet in the solo play that opens Friday at Northern Light Theatre, starring Patricia Darbasie. What’s going on with Donna, loving wife, mother, and bake sale celeb?

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With Donna Orbits The Moon, a 2010 comedy/drama by the American playwright Ian August, Trevor Schmidt, NLT’s indefatigable deep-dive theatre researcher artistic director, adds another distinctive woman’s story to the company’s very considerable archive. Says Schmidt, who directs and designs the production, it lobs “a little psychological mystery our way.” And Donna herself is mystified.

Donna is  “likeable and funny” (which sounds a bit like a pocket description of actor/director Darbasie herself, as Schmidt points out). But the character has been having “incidents of inexplicable rage,” as he describes. “Why is she behaving in ways that are very out of character for her?”

Patricia Darbasie, star of Donna Orbits The Moon, Northern Light Theatre. Photo supplied,

Her episodes of bad behaviour not only perplex the people around her — “her husband, her daughter, her friends are all completely confused” — they baffle Donna too. What’s fuelling this unexpected, out-of-character rage? She’s deeply in denial about what’s motivating these episodes.” Schmidt points to theory that anger isn’t a primary emotion, like love or fear. It’s an offshoot, a reaction, a funnel from other things.

“Public appearance and reputation are very important to Donna … appearing a certain way, formality, discretion, conservatism, And lot of church. She’s ‘what would people think if they knew? How could I face them again?’”

“Religion isn’t a major part of this show, but the church is,” says Schmidt. “It’s never about what God would think of me for doing this. It’s what would the other church members think of me…. When she starts hearing a voice it’s not God, it’s Buzz Aldrin.”

The tone reminds Schmidt of The Pink Unicorn, a surprisingly humorous solo play by the American writer Elise Forier Edie about a Christian widow who has to choose sides in her conservative Texas when her teenage daughter announces she’s gender queer. It was an Sterling Award-winner and hit for Northern Light in the 2014-2015 season. As in the case of that protagonist, Donna is “very specific, very likeable, and we care about her emotional dilemma.”

Patricia Darbasie in Donna Orbits The Moon, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective.

“It’s quite whimsical, I think. And also a mystery you have to slowly piece together, with clues along the way. You have to discover it as she discovers it…. Once you get to the end it all makes sense.”

Cued by the way Donna “finds herself in Outer Space,” Schmidt’s design is inspired, he says, “by the image of a living room floating in space”

Solo shows are, of course, a particular challenge to the actor who has to populate the play, or create a world, single-handedly onstage, in charge of all the words in the play. Darbasie herself wrote and appeared in one: Ribbon, an exploration of Alberta’s Amber Valley, at Studio Theatre. And they’re something of a specialty at Northern Light. The company has a long and varied history with solo shows, like Colm Toíbín’s The Testament of Mary, Schmidt’s multi-character thriller We Had A Girl Before You, the cabaret Baroness Bianka’s Bloodsongs, and more recently the memorably queasy horror story Squeamish. Schmidt himself has performed a few, including Nick Green’s Coffee Dad, Chicken Mom and the Fabulous Buddha Boi.

“I literally thought I might have a heart attack I was so anxious backstage,” he admits. Only the “astute and insightful advice of a sympathetic director” quelled his nerves. She told him “people have come because they like you; they’ve come to support you…. you love the three characters and you’re here to share them.” First-hand experience has made Schmidt empathetic to actor daunted by sole possession of the stage.

“By now we can track where people are at,” he says. He and his frequent stage-manager Liz Alllison-Jorde, an actor/director herself, refers to the second Thursday of the rehearsal period as Crying Day. For the record Darbasie, who directs The Mountaintop at the Citadel later this season, didn’t succumb, says Schmidt cheerfully. And rehearsals for a solo play are shaped by the performer’s own way of working. “It’s not your job to work my way; it’s my job to figure out how you work….”

Patricia Darbasie in Something Unspoken, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Epic Photography

Darbasie is an adventurous theatre artist.  In the Northern Light production of Tennessee Williams’ rarely produced two-hander Something Unspoken two seasons ago, she played the long-time secretary to a wealthy white spinster in the South of the ‘50s. That she is an actor of colour, a departure in the scant history of that play, was an experiment, as Darbasie told 12thnight at the time. It upped the ante, adding dimensions to the subtle homoerotic tensions of the employer-employee relationship that thread through the play. The mysteries of Donna orbiting the moon solo and looking for a stable landing are well within her compass.

Meanwhile, two new Schmidt plays get their premieres in the second half of the season. Robot Girls, about four teenage girls in a science club struggling to build a robot for a competition, opens at Shadow Theatre (directed by John Hudson) in March. “I have to actually build a robot,” says Schmidt the designer. “There will be a couple of days of Googling for that!” he laughs. In April, Candy & The Beast, his “new multi-disciplinary murder mystery/ thriller,” is the finale of the Northern Light season. It has the ring of prairie goth about it: a girl and her little brother set forth from their trailer court to track down a serial killer in the small town of Black Falls.

“It will be weird,” says Schmidt. “That’s my promise!”

PREVIEW

Donna Orbits The Moon

Theatre: Northern Light

Written by: Ian August

Directed and designed by: Trevor Schmidt

Starring: Patricia Darbasie

Where: Studio Theatre, Fringe Theatre Arts Barns

Running: Friday through Feb. 3

Tickets: northernlighttheatre.com