The Cardiac Shadow: Human spirit soars above Nazi atrocity in harrowing play
Dr. Sigmund Rascher has not been forgotten. He was the Nazi monster who used human subjects without their consent for extreme experiments. One of his most barbaric practices was designed to determine the best way to warm Luftwaffe pilots who had been shot down into the North Sea. To measure the human body’s ability to withstand extreme temperatures, some of his victims were forced to remain outdoors in freezing weather for up to 14 hours or were submerged into tanks of ice water. Then, they were placed in a bed with two female “volunteers,” who warmed them with their bodies. Some were already dead – they were the lucky ones, others were simply thrown into boiling water.
Edmonton’s innovative company, the Good Women Dance Collective, has joined with Trevor Schmidt’s equally pioneering alternative theatre company, Northern Light Theatre, in a bold theatrical work designed to give a voice to these voiceless women. The resultant work, The Cardiac Shadow, written by American playwright Clay McLeod Chapman, runs in the ATB Financial Arts Barns’ Studio Theatre until Feb 2.
We know little of the individual stories of the women incarcerated in the concentration camps. The result on display here proves that old theatrical adage that sometimes music or dance can express deeply felt emotions when words fail. As the program notes ask, “Can words really describe where the human spirit goes when the body remains behind, frozen inside an atrocity?”
The show is placed in Schmidt’s simple set, consisting of lines of barbed wire stretched in front of an old fashioned square screen. Behind, hanging in the semi-darkness are symbols of lives soon to be lost. The screen flickers to life showing a home movie of Dr. Rascher’s young daughter playing in the snow with what appears to be items taken from the camp inmates. The doctor’s dispassionate, almost clinical voice (a powerful reading by Vance Avery) muses about the child, mirroring his experiments to come.
The Good Women Dance Collective – Ainsley Hillyard, Alison Kause, Alida Kendell and Kate Stashko – is a quartet of physically powerful, electric talents. They arrive dressed in simple flesh coloured shifts and movingly act out the dreams that sustain them during their ordeal.
Muses the Doctor, “They all look so young,” and indeed they are – teenagers with young dreams. They get excited when they imagine going to the beach and one giggles, “Oh look at that boy – he’s looking at us.” The excellent voice over team (Elisa Benzer, Rachel Bowron, Nadien Chu and Megan Dart) add the words to their dreams. One remembers playing the cello as a child and how the emaciated body of a prisoner beside her made her think of the delicate instrument. Another remembers feeding an aged woman soup.
There is a fine line between dancing a story and merely miming its actions. The latter tends to use words as narration and the dancers as props. These dancers advance the story line, maintaining its own truthfulness and use their innate capacity for body language to offer an honest level of emotion not found in speech.
In The Cardiac Shadow Trevor Schmidt has created a true immersive multimedia experience. The intimate space in the Studio Theatre draws you right into the action. For the sound design Schmidt has turned to the busiest of local musical wizards, Dave Clarke. Clarke has devised an aural universe that includes voices weaving in and out of the music, sometimes echoing back earlier phrases and thoughts. Katrina Beatty of Loud Whisper Production provides the evocative film and projections.
In this production, action does not speak louder than words. The two co-exist in this mixed company (17 of them) of committed artists producing, from a deeply personal place, an overarching story of the human spirit soaring above inconceivable torment. The ending comes as something of an unexpected metaphysical miracle. The final moments will stay with you for some time.
On orders attributed to Heinrich Himmler, Dr. Rascher was shot just before the end of World War II and his experiments were found to be inhumane and criminal in the Nuremberg Trials.
Photos by Epic Photography
