Between Breaths is not to be missed
Last week the Winterset Award was presented to my sister, Heather Smith, for her book Ebb & Flow. I hadn’t read the other two shortlisted works, so I decided to read them, starting with Between Breaths by Robert Chafe.
Dr. Jon Lien came to Newfoundland in 1968 as an animal behaviourist in Memorial University’s psychology department, and while his initial focus was on birds he eventually became internationally renowned for his work freeing whales who were trapped in fishing nets. Chafe’s play tells the story of this remarkable man, capturing Lien’s outsized personality, his passion, and his heart.
Chafe also speaks to the Newfoundland experience in a respectful, clear-headed way that doesn’t portray folks from the outports as simple fishermen and avoids the condesending overtone of colonial era portrayals of the “noble bayman”. There is a short speech by Lien in the penultimate scene, where he tries to explain to his wife Judy why he goes out to rescue the whales. He talks about the fishermen, and it is clear he is impressed by their skill and the knowledge they possess of the fishery and the sea. He is humbled by them, this multi-degreed university professor, genuinely awed by their capabilities, and thrilled that he might be able to help them. It is a real, practical, honourable presentation of hard-working people.
Chafe chooses to start the play at the end, in Lien’s final moments, because, as he states in the introduction, to conclude the play there would be “irredeemably sad”. This leads to incredible moments of reverberation, where a line or statement sends the reader reeling back to a previous point in the play, creating a new poignancy and depth in the earlier scene, which rebounds to give added impact to the present setting. This happens several times in the final scene, building the tension and emotion like sea ice rafting up in layer after layer, higher and denser and devastatingly immovable. The end of the play is beautiful and harrowing, joyful and redeemably sad.
Verdict: Very highly recommended, as a book to read and as a play to see (which is now very high on my To Do list!).
Between Breaths is published by Playwrights Canada Press.
Dr. Jon Lien came to Newfoundland in 1968 as an animal behaviourist in Memorial University’s psychology department, and while his initial focus was on birds he eventually became internationally renowned for his work freeing whales who were trapped in fishing nets. Chafe’s play tells the story of this remarkable man, capturing Lien’s outsized personality, his passion, and his heart.
Chafe also speaks to the Newfoundland experience in a respectful, clear-headed way that doesn’t portray folks from the outports as simple fishermen and avoids the condesending overtone of colonial era portrayals of the “noble bayman”. There is a short speech by Lien in the penultimate scene, where he tries to explain to his wife Judy why he goes out to rescue the whales. He talks about the fishermen, and it is clear he is impressed by their skill and the knowledge they possess of the fishery and the sea. He is humbled by them, this multi-degreed university professor, genuinely awed by their capabilities, and thrilled that he might be able to help them. It is a real, practical, honourable presentation of hard-working people.
Chafe chooses to start the play at the end, in Lien’s final moments, because, as he states in the introduction, to conclude the play there would be “irredeemably sad”. This leads to incredible moments of reverberation, where a line or statement sends the reader reeling back to a previous point in the play, creating a new poignancy and depth in the earlier scene, which rebounds to give added impact to the present setting. This happens several times in the final scene, building the tension and emotion like sea ice rafting up in layer after layer, higher and denser and devastatingly immovable. The end of the play is beautiful and harrowing, joyful and redeemably sad.
Verdict: Very highly recommended, as a book to read and as a play to see (which is now very high on my To Do list!).
Between Breaths is published by Playwrights Canada Press.
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