‘Fifteen Dogs’ at Crow’s Theatre offers a dog’s eye view of Toronto

In André Alexis’s celebrated novel “Fifteen Dogs,” the gods Hermes and Apollo make a boozed-up bet about whether giving dogs human intelligence would make them happier than humans. They grant such sentience to a group of canines who make their way through Toronto, learning language, encountering threats and opportunities presented by people and one another, and experiencing the complexity of beauty and love.

This month Crow’s Theatre is producing the world premiere stage version of “Fifteen Dogs,” adapted and directed by Marie Farsi and featuring a cast of six. The Star invited Alexis, Farsi, and actor Peter Fernandes to reflect on what it’s like to consider Toronto from a dog’s eye view and to bring this work to the stage.

Marie Farsi, adapter and director

Marie Farsi was born in Paris, moved to Montreal as a teenager and has worked as a theatre artist in Vancouver and Stratford as well as Toronto. “I’m still a foreigner here, as I am to most places,” she said. “I never take the city for granted.”

She and her partner Tyrone Savage, who plays Apollo and the mastiff Atticus in “Fifteen Dogs,” adopted their black Lab mix Pantufla during the pandemic. “She’s the best,” said Farsi. “I get to discover the city in new ways with her.”

In “Fifteen Dogs,” Farsi said, “the characters themselves aren’t quite regular dogs. They are this in-between species.” They “rediscover Toronto with consciousness, and we get to see that world for the first time through their eyes. The awe that we often associate with children, I think that’s what they’re experiencing.”

At the same time, said Farsi, “they’re still dogs … having sophisticated thinking juxtaposed with unsophisticated behaviour, that’s very funny. I think the show will be much funnier than people might expect.”

Peter Fernandes, actor

Peter Fernandes’s primary character is the beagle Benjy, whose “Fifteen Dogs” adventures bring him to Toronto’s east end, which Fernandes himself now calls home. About a year ago he and his partner, actor Jenny Weisz, bought a house in East York and adopted their Shih Tzu/poodle mix Pico de Gallo.

“I’ve been watching him intently and definitely have picked up some of his traits,” said Fernandes of Pico. “I’ve taken some of his nervousness, maybe a little bit of his reaction to certain situations and infused that into my performance.”

The representation of dogs in the show is not literal: the actors don’t wear costumes with ears or get down on all fours. All the same, playing a dog “is exhausting,” said Fernandes. “There’s a reason dogs take long naps … there’s a lot to be aware of in terms of how you hold your body, how you wag your tail that isn’t there or a difference in attention that you’re required to have while you’re in the dog body that really is draining but also really fun.”

André Alexis, author

If “Fifteen Dogs” presents the world through a dog’s perspective, it also evokes the feeling of losing a pet, which is “likely to be your first experience of death,” said author Alexis. That was hard to write about, he said, but the book is “also about how transcendent and wonderful it is that dogs exist at all, period … it’s really more about a human experience than a dog experience for me,” he said.

We photographed Alexis in High Park, which along with Parkdale are “the most important parts of the city for me,” he said, “where I’ve lived the longest, virtually 30 years.” It’s a central place in the story as well: The dogs base themselves in High Park after escaping from a veterinary clinic at King and Shaw.

Dogs’ acute sense of smell plays a key role in the story, something that Alexis started thinking about while listening to a CBC story about how dogs “could identify each of the constituent parts” of a stew while it was cooking. “They’re always by the ground. They’re smelling sh-t all the time because they’re trying to eat it … because they can smell what went into it.”

High Park is “a riot of odours” depending on the season, said Alexis. “If the chip trucks are going, you’ll smell the oil, you’ll smell the chips, you’ll smell candy, the dog pits, the stagnant water, flowing water, the trees, Grenadier restaurant … if it’s cherry season, you’ll smell the blooms.”

Alexis is not directly involved in the stage version: He’s trusted Farsi with the material and is looking forward to opening night. “How do you create this district of odours and feelings?” he said. “I’m just really curious about how Toronto gets translated onstage.”

“Fifteen Dogs” plays at Crow’s Theatre through Feb. 5. Crowstheatre.com and (647) 341-7390 ext. 1010.

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