What if we could love the planet as much as we love one another?
"Warm, wise, and overflowing with generosity, this is a love story so epic it embraces all of creation. Yet another reminder of how blessed we are to be in the struggle with elders like David and Tara.” – Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis
What You Won’t Do for Love is an inspiring conversation about love and the environment. When artist Miriam Fernandes approached the legendary eco-pioneer David Suzuki to create a theatre piece about climate change, she expected to write about David’s perspective as a scientist. Instead, she discovered the boundless vision and efforts of Tara Cullis, a literature scholar, climate organizer, and David’s life partner. Miriam realized that David and Tara’s decades-long love for each other, and for family and friends, has only clarified and strengthened their resolve to fight for the planet.
What You Won’t Do for Love transforms real-life conversations between David, Tara, Miriam, and her husband Sturla into a charmingly novel and poetic work. Over one idyllic day in British Columbia, Miriam and Sturla take in a lifetime of David and Tara’s adventures, inspiration, and love, and in turn reflect on their own relationships to each other and the planet. Revealing David Suzuki and Tara Cullis in an affable, conversational, and often comedic light, What You Won’t Do For Love asks if we can love our planet the same way we love one another.
What You Won't Do for Love exists as a theatre piece and a film. The film will be available for streaming via the Stratford Festival for some time during the summer. The theatre piece will be performed live in several performances at the 2022 Luminato Festival.
Director's Note: A few years ago our team began creating a play with David and Tara. We all quickly fell in love with them, their stories, and adventures, and we wanted to share their stories to inspire others to care for our planet as they do. Miriam worked tirelessly to transcribe and sift through hours and hours of our recordings. Then Ravi and Miriam would piece the stories together and read them at 3 am to Kevin, who would help to shape the story. David and Tara would then want to rewrite and add MORE stories and we just kept piecing this puzzle together. It was an amazing detective story, scouring through evidence and making our case till 4 o'clock in the morning! Once the puzzle started to form a picture, what became clear to us was how David and Tara's five-decades-long love bolsters and reinforces their individual convictions and actions for the planet. We thought, maybe their love stories could become a template for others' actions. In Feb 2020, we got to perform the show with a live audience. They loved it and were as moved and inspired as we were. It was magic.
For more information: https://doforlove.whynot.theatre. Trailer for the film available here: https://doforlove.whynot.theatre/education.
