'Sila' explores human-environment connectedness

Depending on who you talk to, the Inuit word "sila" can have a variety of meanings: "breath," "air," "sky," "wind," "weather," "spirit" or "intellect." Or "the principle behind all animation or locomotion."

"For the Inuit, it's the primary component of everything that exists," said Chantal Bilodeau, the author of the play "Sila," which opened at Cyrano's June 24.

(Bilobeau uses the Canadian pronunciation, "SEE-la." In Alaska, the "i" is usually shorter and the word can be pronounced something like "SCHLAH," particularly in its Yup'ik manifestation, "ella.")

Originally from Montreal, Canada, Bilodeau came to the U.S. 20 years ago to study filmmaking.

"I was interested in writing for film, but there were not a lot of writing classes offered in the film department at Ohio University," she said. "So I went to the theater department for writing classes and discovered that I liked it better."

"Sila" is the first in a series of eight plays that she calls "The Arctic Cycle."

"There's one for each country in the Arctic Circle," she said: Canada, the United States, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland and Greenland. "Sila" is the Canadian installment and was inspired by a trip she took to Baffin Island in 2009: "A lot of the people I met and the stories I heard ended up in the play."

The cast of characters includes a climate scientist, an Inuit activist, Coast Guard officers and two polar bears. All are dealing with changes happening in that region, separately at first. But as the two-act play progresses, Bilodeau said, "their lives cross and they have to find ways to work with each other."

Bilodeau will make her third trip to Alaska for the opening weekend of the play. A 2007 trip to Denali, Valdez and the Wrangells "started me off on this whole Arctic thing," she said. More recently, she traveled to nine communities in Southeast Alaska with several other artists focused on climate change in a sojourn sponsored by the Island Institute in Sitka and called the "Tideline Tour."

"Sila" was originally commissioned for a company in San Diego that no longer exists, Bilodeau said. The premiere took place in 2014 at the Underground Railway Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Writing in the Boston Globe, critic Terry Byrne opined that the depictions of personal relationships were well-crafted and that the play "soars when it focuses on the essential interconnectedness of everything on Earth."

But Byrne also thought the script was overwhelmed by the complexities of the several stories and "a need to lecture the audience."

On the other hand, the Canadian entertainment blog site "My Entertainment World" found it "breathtaking," especially the life-size polar bear puppets used in the Cambridge incarnation, and called it "an entrancing theatrical experience, storytelling at its best."

For the Cyrano's production the bears are represented with masks created by Margret Hugi-Lewis.

The playwright said she was excited about the Anchorage performances because this marks the first time "Sila" has been presented "in Arctic territory."

"There are a lot of similarities with the Canadian and U.S. Arctic," she said. "I'm interested to see how it resonates in Alaska."

SILA will be presented at 7 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday through July 10 at Cyrano's, 413 D St. Tickets are available at centertix.net.

A "talkback" panel with the playwright on issues raised by the play will take place after the show on Saturday.

Chantal Bilodeau will give a post-show talk on "Sila" and the other plays in the "Arctic Cycle" series on Sunday.