Kit Brennan’s latest play looks at women and aging

By Esme Terry

Last week, a new play, The Invisibility of Eileen, premièred at the Great Canadian Theatre Company in Ottawa. It was written by Kit Brennan, an associate professor in Concordia’s Theatre Department. It is one of many plays she has written and seen produced from Vancouver to Nova Scotia, but her career began onstage.

“I made my living as an actor for about 15 years,” she said in an interview. “But when I turned 30, I found myself faced with this great abyss, which many female actors seem to encounter.

“Until that age, they have all these meaty roles available to them. Then in their 30s, they end up playing mainly mums. Only once they hit age 45 do they start to get great roles again.”

Since she had a number of great ideas for stories she wanted to write, Brennan launched herself life as a playwright. She studied for her master’s in playwriting at the University of Alberta, and her first play was produced in Saskatoon in 1993.

That was also the first year she came to Concordia, where she currently teaches playwriting and storytelling. “Concordia and my life as a playwright are very much tied up together.”

The two main characters in The Invisibility of Eileen fall into the over-45 category. “I have a penchant for older characters in my plays,” she said.

The story is about a middle-aged woman who is starting to feel invisible. One morning, she finds another woman asleep under her peony bushes, and invites her in. The visit lasts hours, then days. The differences that emerge between these two women throughout the play eventually inspire Eileen to leave her family and head for a new life on Saltspring Island.

It is important to Brennan that she be an integral part in the première productions of each of her plays. “I am consulted as to casting and director choices,” she said. “In rehearsal, I’m available for script cuts. Then I withdraw so I can get a clearer eye on things. I’m really there to make the flow make sense.”

It happens that two of the actors in the production are Concordia graduates Graham Cuthbertson and Grania Maguire.

“I had nothing to do with selecting them,” she said. “But for me, having taught them, what a payoff it was for them to be chosen! That was such a thrill.”

In May this year, another of her plays will be produced for the fourth time, at Montreal’s Centaur Theatre. Tiger’s Heart also stars a Concordia graduate – Dave Lapommery. It is based on the life of Dr. James Barry, who worked as a military surgeon between 1816 and 1860, and was posthumously discovered to have been a woman.

What price of loneliness must she have paid? Who did she tell? What was the cost for that secret life? These are all questions Brennan asks in her play.

“My research took me to some wonderful places. In [the British medical journal] The Lancet, I came across all sorts of letters from people who, with hindsight, claimed they had known she was a woman all along.”

Her fascination with this character goes on. “I realized, when I had finished Tiger’s Heart that I hadn’t really finished with Barry,” Brennan said. “There is another theory that she was not a woman but was in fact a hermaphrodite.” Now Brennan is working on her first novel, telling Barry’s story in the first person, and focusing on her relationship with super-nurse Florence Nightingale.

“I have an agent and am currently trying to finish my first draft,” she said. “It’s another brand new world.”

The Invisibility of Eileen runs from March 11 to 28 at The Great Canadian Theatre Company in Ottawa. For information, call 613-236-5196. Tiger’s Heart will run from May 4 to 30 at the Centaur Theatre in Montreal.