Play examines taking the right path or the easy one

Tamara Podemski

Actress Tamara Podemski is starring in a production that highlights the modern-day struggle between choosing what is good for our health and environment, and what is good for our economy.

Although based on an adaptation of an English-language rendition of Florian Borchmeyer’s and Thomas Ostermeier’s production of  An Enemy of the People, written by Henrik Ibsen in 1882, the subject matter is still relevant today.

“I think that it really is a big theme in the play of how we reconcile our responsibilities with our morals and our ethics and how it is actually not a fixed thing,” said 36-year-old Podemski, who plays the wife of Dr. Thomas Stockmann, Katherine.

The Tarragon Theatre production, running until Oct. 26  in Tarragon’s Mainspace, is set in a 21st-century spa town. Stockmann has discovered that the baths’ drainage system in a newly built bathing complex is contaminated, but going public with his results would destroy the town’s economy. 

When his brother, who is also the town’s mayor, tells him that the necessary repairs would be too expensive and tries to keep him from exposing his findings about the potential health crisis, Stockmann must decide whether to take the right path, or the easy path.

“Tar sands, climate change, fracking, pipelines, Walkerton, the cod and salmon fisheries, tailing ponds and ethical oil, all came to mind as I experienced this production. I knew instantly that we had to produce it,” said Richard Rose, Tarragon’s artistic director, in a press release.

Podemski, born and raised in Toronto’s Bathurst Street and Wilson Avenue area to an Ojibway mother and an Israeli father, has enjoyed a 20-year career on screen and stage – most notably in the Broadway musical Rent.

Podemski also won the Special Jury Prize for Acting at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival for her role in the film Four Sheets to the Wind, as well as an IFC Spirit Award nomination for best supporting actress in 2008.

Speaking about her latest role, playing a wife and mother, Podemski said she can relate to her character.

“The interesting parallel is that we’ve made the Stockmanns younger, so they’re two young parents and [Mrs. Stockmann] had a baby about six months earlier. In real life, I have a baby of two months so I fully understand all the parts of what it is to juggle a household,” she said.

“When you have a family, all of a sudden all your ideas about the world and about what you used to stand on a soap box and preach, everything bends and warps slightly and you have to provide for a family and have the love and responsibility and duty of a mother. You’re still trying to be true to yourself and stand up for what you believe in.

She said the subject matter of the play is so heavy that it has led to intense conversations between the cast members.

“Everyone brings their own experience. We have quite a few parents that are in the show and it’s very rich material to pull from and we all have our own personal experience.”

Podemski also spoke about her personal experience growing up in a home that observed both her Jewish and native cultures.

“It’s never been a challenge for me. I think it’s much harder for other people to wrap their heads around. Myself and my sisters… we look native, so we’ve always been more easily identifiable as that, but we grew up deeply immersed in the Jewish community in Toronto. We live in a city where there is a really rich native community and a really rich Jewish community and it is very easy and accessible to be part of both,” said Podemski, who is completing a degree in aboriginal studies and Hebrew literature at the University of Toronto.

“I think the only challenge was sometimes within the community, and certain ideas that community has about authenticity or membership, which is really just details and not about what is inside and where your faith lies… I’ve been a Jew all my life and no one has ever been able to take that away from me.

 

For tickets to An Enemy of the People,
call 416-531-1827 or visit
www.tarragontheatre.com