What You Won’t Do For Love isn’t a typical theatre experience, but it’s a particularly profound one.
Presented at the Kingston Grand Theatre on Mar. 11 as part of the production’s Ontario spring tour, What You Won’t Do For Loveinvites audiences into a reflective conversation about the lives and romantic partnership of environmentalist David Suzuki and writer and activist Tara Cullis. Written by Cullis, Miriam Fernandes, Ravi Jain, and Suzuki and produced by Why Not Theatre, the piece blends personal storytelling with theatrical performance to examine how love, between people and for the planet, can sustain decades of activism.
At the centre of the production are Cullis and Suzuki themselves, who appear onstage alongside performers Sturla Alvsvåg as himself and Michelle Mohammed, who portrays Fernandes. The play unfolds as an intimate series of conversations among the four performers, who read from scripts derived directly from real conversations held while developing the work about a variety of topics ranging from Suzuki’s childhood all the way to Friedrich Nietzsche. The result feels less like watching a traditional drama and more like sitting in on an intimate dinner.
The show’s most compelling achievement is its ability to humanize a public figure like Suzuki. Widely known as an award-winning scientist and broadcaster, Suzuki has spent decades communicating humanity’s impact on the natural world through television, radio, and dozens of books. Onstage, however, the production reframes him not as a global environmental voice, but as an inspirational, relatable, and often hilarious person.
Cullis’s presence is equally essential. An award-winning author and activist who co-founded the David Suzuki Foundation alongside Suzuki, Cullis emerges as both an intellectual collaborator and Suzuki’s emotional anchor. The production highlights her contributions to The David Suzuki Foundation while emphasizing the importance of her and Suzuki’s relationship in sustaining lifelong activism.
Director Ravi Jain’s staging is elegant in its restraint. Rather than relying on an elaborate spectacle, the production creates a minimal space ripe for vulnerability, consisting only of a table and four chairs. Sparingly integrated projections of pre-recorded videos and photographs drawn from Suzuki and Cullis’s lives add theatricality without distracting the audience from the performers. Similarly, minimal lighting design by André du Toit and sound design and composition by Meg Roe subtly remind audiences they’re witnessing a play while preserving the intimacy of the experience.
This minimalist approach allows the emotional core of the piece to emerge clearly. Moments of humour punctuate heavier reflections on environmental responsibility. Audiences move easily from laughter at stories of Suzuki and Cullis’s awkward first dates to attentive silence as Suzuki nearly tears up on stage discussing the ongoing climate crisis.
Part conversation and part performance, the production encourages audiences to reconsider their own relationship with the natural world. Environmentalism is framed not as an abstract or intangible political issue, but as a deeply personal responsibility grounded in care for one another at the community level.
Once the initial awe of sitting only metres away from Suzuki fades, the intimacy of the performance becomes impossible to ignore. Hearing Suzuki and Cullis speak candidly about their lives and urgent global challenges in such a personal setting proved to be deeply moving, and the sense of inspiration I felt watching was infectious.
By grounding the climate crisis in lived experience, Why Not Theatre creates something powerful. What You Won’t Do For Love is a reminder that the fight for the planet begins with the most human feeling of all: love.
Tags
David Suzuki, kingston grand theatre, Theatre, What You Won't Do For Love
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