Real-life tragedy adds poignancy to Eliot-inspired What the Thunder Said

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There is so much in T.S. Eliot's seminal poem The Waste Land that has a new anguished resonance for the members of Calgary's One Yellow Rabbit theatre company. They were in the process of creating What the Thunder Said – a play inspired by and built around the 1922 poem, dealing with the aftermath of the First World War – when composer and sound designer Richard McDowell, a long-time OYR ensemble member, died unexpectedly. Suddenly the sorrowful poem took on a deeply personal meaning, with lines such as: "He who was living is now dead / We who were living are now dying / With a little patience."

The play opens this week in Calgary. It's going to be an emotional run.

"The show became about memory and loss and grief and dealing with these things in a very personal way, close to home," says OYR's Andy Curtis.

What the Thunder Said began as a project for the Union of Theatres of Europe, which was creating a large, multicompany theatrical response to the First World War for the 2014 centenary. OYR's Denise Clarke had been speaking about a collaboration with legendary Canadian theatre director Peter Hinton, who expressed a desire to get back on stage. When the UTE got in touch, they saw their opportunity. Even after the UTE project became delayed, the Rabbits decided to go ahead with What the Thunder Said, which would have its world premiere at the 2015 High Performance Rodeo (the annual multidisciplinary performance festival produced by OYR).

After a workshop last May, Hinton and the Rabbits gathered in November to create the piece. They were four days into the process when McDowell, back in Calgary from his home in Mexico to work on the show, had a massive heart attack and died.

Gone was their sound genius, their tech guru, their long-time creative partner, and their great, great friend.

"It was deeply shocking and we were gutted," says Curtis, who worked with McDowell for more than 25 years.

"In the few days following his death we asked ourselves many times, how do we carry on? What do we do? And it became kind of conflated with The Waste Land and one of its seeming purposes, which was to ask the question, what now? What does one do in the wake of a great grief, in the midst of a great grief? How do you carry on?"

McDowell joined the ensemble in 1988, becoming the company's resident composer and sound designer, creating scores for more than 30 works.

Always ahead of the curve when it came to technology, he also looked after IT issues. (For a taste of his musical genius take a walk through downtown Calgary over the lunch hour any day through January. Composer and musician Kenna Burima has created Rico's Requiem, a 40-minute soundscape built using many of McDowell's compositions. The musical homage plays at the Calgary Tower Carillon at noon daily as part of the HPR.)

McDowell was busy with ideas for the T.S. Eliot project, enthusiastic and deeply engaged at rehearsal on Nov. 6. Then that night the 60-year-old had a heart attack and, despite what Clarke describes as heroic efforts by medical personnel, died after midnight.

A few hours later, OYR threw open the doors to its studio. As word spread, more than 100 people gathered for what became an impromptu wake. A more formal memorial was held in the same space the next week.

In the haze of grief and shock, the Rabbits had to decide what to do about What the Thunder Said, with a world premiere scheduled to take place in a little more than two months. "The first question was, do we do the show? … And we thought, well, we must go on and honour our friend," Curtis says.

"I wanted to go to bed and put that bed into a cave and put that cave into a larger cave … but of course we had to keep going because that's the tradition of our art form," says Blake Brooker, OYR co-founder and the show's director. "It feels like if we can't bring our comrade back we can at least paddle in the same swimming hole we were all in together when he drowned. In that there's succour, I suppose."

"For me I didn't want to be anywhere but at the theatre," says Clarke, who describes McDowell as her first boyfriend and first great love – and who had rushed to the hospital and was with him when he died. "I took a lot of refuge in the work."

Still, it was hugely difficult – emotionally and practically. Once they decided that the show must go on, they were faced with actually having to do that – bringing this dense, opaque, complicated and dark poem to life despite their grief and without McDowell's essential contribution.

"[His] voice was so strong and necessary in our group," Curtis says. "He was our sound. He was our ears. He was integral. It was a huge loss personally for each one of us, and on a creative level it was a bit like being amputated. Having some essential something removed."

The company at first considered eliminating sound altogether from the work, creating a silent ode to McDowell. They worked in silence for some time.

"That works on a personal level but it's not very good for showbiz," Curtis says. "We realized at some point in rehearsal that it just seemed empty and perhaps wasn't the most apropos tribute to our friend."

So they brought in composer Dewi Wood and continued to soldier on, shaping the triptych.

Part one serves to illuminate the poem and the show's chronology – with the performers (Clarke, Curtis, Hinton and OYR's Michael Green) explaining the process of creating the work, including McDowell's death. Part two is a ballet macabre. In part three, the audience, with a new understanding and access points, hears the poem.

Curtis says it's hard to get through it – those lines like "he who is living is now dead" – without tearing up onstage. And the ensemble is bracing for what may be the most emotionally gruelling opening of their lives.

"This show is a sad show for us," says Curtis. "It was probably going to be that anyway. But now it's soul sad."

What the Thunder Said runs Jan. 14-30 at Calgary's Big Secret Theatre (oyr.org). The 2015 High Performance Rodeo is on at various Calgary venues until Feb. 1 (hprodeo.ca).