​​​​Cathia Pagotto

Photo credit: Antoine Saito

MARIĆ AT THE LAKE

creation and direction

2020

set design: Anna Tonneguzzi

lighting design: Tiffanie Boffa

costume design: Thorhildur Sunna Johansdottir

choreography: Charles Gao, Cathia Pagotto, Elliot Pond

sound design: Savion Achod and Andrew Bradt

lighting design assistant: Subin Bae

costume design assistant: Ariane Brisebois

stage manager: Caitlin Stever

asm: Georgia Holland, Abi Sanie

​performers: 

Max Allen
Brianna Bagshaw-Stocks
Siarra Burke-Smith
Fiona Sophia Cousineau
Laurence Côté
Tamara May Fattouh
Charles Gao
Emme Grace Geryk
Julien Jung
Noah Henri Labranche
Elliot PondEric Wakim

Director's Notes from the program:

​
Last Spring, I learned about Albert Einstein's wife, Mileva Marić, during some general interest reading I was doing on the principles of physics. I’ve always gravitated towards biographical work, because lives are full of intricate layers of the mundane, the extraordinary, the real and the magical. It’s all perspective.

Marić at the Lake draws its inspiration from one of the great devised performance works of the 20th century, a collaboration between Robert Wilson, Phillip Glass and Lucinda Childs called Einstein on the Beach. Knowing that I would be leading a devised work, the temptation was too great…

So we have collaborated on a parallel world; contemplating the premise that while Einstein was at the Beach, Marić was at the Lake (lakes had figured prominently in her life – the title seemed serendipitous!).

And so the work began. To explore a life is a tall order: to give it justice, and to search for its truth while not imposing too much of our own reflections on it.

Marić’s life was by no accounts an easy one. She was a brilliant mathematician and physicist, but she also held a great interest in psychology and the study of the brain. She was formidable, and yet born female in a time that was not generous to women who did not fall in line.

Despite Marić’s hardships, we choose to believe she may have observed the patterns in her life with objectivity, that she would have seen the absurdity, tragedy, and poignancy of her surroundings, and embraced the beauty of a life that appeared to have fallen on the wrong side of relativity.

We hope she remained inspired by it all.

Cathia Pagotto