Giving myths a makeover on the big stage: Adam and Eve/Hawa and Ovid’s ‘Metamorphosis’ told in fresh ways at Crow’s and Tarragon theatres

Ancient stories are getting fresh treatments on theatrical stages in Toronto and the GTA these days.

Following on from Why Not Theatre’s “Mahabharata” at the Shaw Festival — an epic retelling of the 4,000-year-old Sanskrit poem that is central to Indian culture — two other productions are using foundational, mythic stories as source material in fascinating and different ways.

One of the starting points of Makram Ayache’s new play “The Hooves Belonged to the Deer” is the story of the birth of humankind, which appears in the Bible as that of Adam and Eve, and in the Qur’an as Adam and Hawa. And it’s Ovid’s epic poem “Metamorphoses” that forms the basis for “Metamorphoses 2023.”

The central character of “The Hooves Belonged to the Deer” is Izzy, a queer young Muslim drawn into evangelical Christianity. The material is drawn from Ayache’s own life and he plays Izzy in Peter Hinton-Davis’s staging.

“The first person I came out to was a Christian youth pastor in the small town in Alberta where I grew up,” said Ayache. “It was this amazing youth centre with a lot of joy and fun and video games and whatnot. But in retrospect, I could see it was a space that was looking to evangelize and convert young people.”

Born in Lebanon, Ayache moved with his family, who are of the Druze faith, to America when he was four and to Alberta when he was six.

“I grew up being told we’re going to marry inside our religion. We’ve got to stay inside the faith,” he said. His parents were busy running a restaurant, “and so I got wrapped up in those spiritual conversations with this pastor who I built a lot of trust with. And at 16 I went to this big Christian conference and gave my life to Christ,” said Ayache.

There was no place for homosexuality in his family’s faith nor his new Christian community, which made Ayache feel confusion and shame. In his early 20s, Ayache faced these issues and found a new sense of himself “because of building bridges and queer communities,” he said.

In the play, Izzy imagines an alternative Garden of Eden, in which a blond man named Steve complicates the relationship between Adam and Hawa. Both versions of the Garden of Eden story, Christian and Muslim, “suggest that the spiritual centre of life is man and woman and their capacity to create life together. So what does that do to gay, queer and trans people?” said Ayache.

“People don’t respond so negatively to left-handed people or red-haired people, but there’s just as many of them as there are queer people. But something about our existence totally destabilizes cis-straight people … why? I’m genuinely asking that,” he said.

The play does not demonize the pastor. The person the character is based on “was really loving,” said Ayache. “He was trying to save my soul because he cared so much about me … I think we have to reckon with that because it’s easy to think the other political side is not good that they’re all evil conspiring villains,” he said.

“That’s where my faith stems from,” added Ayache. “If we really want a better world, if we want something that is greater than what we’re able to build right now, it has to go beyond the veneers of the political conversations that we’re having. That’s where I think the invitation is.”

While Ayache uses biblical and Qur’anic material in his play to raise questions about contemporary polarization, Theatre Smith-Gilmour has turned to Ovid in its new production, “Metamorphoses 2023,” “to take us back where we began” as theatre artists, said co-artistic director Dean Gilmour.

He and his co-artistic director (and wife), Michele Smith, are graduates of the École Jacques Lecoq in Paris, which teaches a form of theatre-making based in storytelling and collaborative creation. “Instead of being in our heads when we start a project, around a table, we just jump in the space and try things,” said Smith.

Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” chronicles the history of the world from stories about the origin of humankind through to then-recent events such as the deification of Julius Caesar. In it Smith and Gilmour found a trove of stories — some familiar, some less so — to serve as source material for their creative process.

The cast of “Metamorphoses 2023” includes two classically trained Indian dancers, Neena Jayarajan and Sukruti Tirupattur. They bring their tradition of storytelling through Bharatanatyam dance to the collaboration, for example in a scene in which one of them enacts a death ritual.

Those in the audience familiar with the dance form will be able to “read the code,” as Gilmour put it, and know what’s happening, while others will need to do some decoding. “I find that it’s an invitation inside, to understand ‘Oh, what is this mysterious thing that she’s doing?’” said Gilmour. “In a way, it’s a cultural exchange.”

While they knew they the stories in “Metamorphoses” were ancient, Smith and Gilmour were surprised at how fresh the material is, treating themes of transgender identity and clashes between the sexes. That many of the characters are mythic figures and gods “gives us a distance to look at contemporary issues in a metaphorical way,” said Gilmour.

Smith-Gilmour is a veteran troupe — founded in 1980, they’ve created more than 44 productions — and are frequently referred to as a physical theatre company, something that Smith said she finds frustrating, as she sees their work as “spiritual, but where we use the whole body.”

Lately they’ve adopted the descriptive language of “theatre that moves” for their work, which communicates how much physicality is involved and how they aspire to create an affective connection with the audience. It also captures their restless spirit.

“Moving is not accepting the status quo. So moving means many, many things that we love,” said Smith.

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