Vision Disturbance is an odd love story written by Christina Masciotti, and Theatre Inconnu is bringing it to the stage this month. The play follows Mondo, an immigrant woman in the middle of a divorce so vicious that the stress begins to affect her eyesight—this leads to a budding romance with her optometrist. The pair are the only on-stage characters, and the script digs deep into their psyches, allowing director Wendy Gail to dig deep into the messaging.
“In some ways, we all feel like strangers in a strange land,” says Gail. “Mondo, she is an immigrant from Greece who lives now in Redding, Pennsylvania. And she also doesn’t feel like she belongs in this community at all.”
Gail is a well-established director in the Victoria theatre scene and she always finds a way to put her own spin on things, particularly when it comes to her stance on women taking the stage.
“Plays have mostly been written by men for men and one of my guiding things is to find plays that have strong women in the roles,” says Gail. “If it doesn’t, and I’ve been asked to direct it, I’ll try to figure out a way to make it have strong women in it. For example, I directed a play called Trad for Theatre Inconnu—it was supposed to be done by three men. I thought, well, the heck with that. It was sort of a fantasy play set in Ireland… So I figured, hey, we can have women play those men, and we did. They put on the long, grey beards and the hats and everything, and they were fabulous, and people loved it.”
This play is no exception. Mondo’s character arc shows her strength, humanity, grit, sense of humor, and grief, says Gail.
“Coming to a completely different world, you have to have a lot of strength and fortitude, and flexibility too, because you have to be able to pick up on the new language as well,” she says. “And so Mondo’s journey is really well illustrated by the author. Mondo has a lot of monologues in which she describes not only her husband, but also her experience as an immigrant living in this new, weird world, and also what life was like in Greece. She ultimately comes to a realization that she has to integrate into this world if she’s going to make it, but not to sort of shove off her Greek identity because she will always be a Greek woman in living in the US… It certainly gives it a lot of texture and a lot of depth to have that to work with.”
The show deals with a wide range of human emotions, leaving it hard to clearly label as a tragedy, comedy, drama, romance, or any other singular definition. But Gail says that, ultimately, the show is about hope.
“I think a lot of people are angry, a lot of people are anxious, a lot of people are depressed for various, you know, gazillions of reasons,” she says. “And this play shows that even if you’re not perfect, there are aspects of the world around you that you can savour and enjoy. And that’s what these two people discover with each other. And it’s not saying, Oh, they get married, and they wind up happily ever after or anything like that. It’s just saying that with another person, or a friend or whatever, you can find ways to find joy in your life. And I think we all have to hang on to that and remember that, and hopefully this play will make people think that and feel that.”
Vision Disturbance
Various days and times, until Saturday, May 18
$10 student tickets, 1923 Fernwood Road
theatreinconnu.com