“It’s taboo to do that,” Moscovitch freely admits of her directive note,which was “a response to some of the conversations I had with artistic directors and directors about the piece. Because we are so culturally programmed with the narrative of an older man seduced by a younger woman determined to have sex with him – which is actually very rare,I think – I was worried,” she says. “I even saw it in auditions,a director pushing a young,female actor to be more vampy and seductive. I thought,this could go all sorts of sideways,so I broke that taboo.”
Moscovitch – wry and expressive,in a sweatshirt emblazoned with a giant rainbow – is speaking to me on Zoom from Halifax,Nova Scotia,where she lives with her husband,Christian Barry,founder of the theatre company 2b,and their five-year-old son,Elijah.
Pre-pandemic,she and Barry shuttled between Toronto and Halifax,where 2b is based,and travelled for productions several times a month. Since March 2020,however,they’ve been holed up in Nova Scotia,where coronavirus rates are so low that not only are schools,restaurants and cafes all open,but some theatre has also been possible.
“One of my older plays,Little One,went up in Cape Breton,because they had no cases,” says Moscovitch. “The Highland Arts Centre is the only theatre open in the whole country,so they’ve been getting all this national attention.”
Moscovitch grew up in Canada’s pretty,civilised,if somewhat sleepy capital,Ottawa,the daughter of academics;her father was a professor of economics and social policy,while her mother wrote feminist non-fiction about women in the labour force. An aspiring actress,Moscovitch attended Canada’s National Theatre School,where,she says,she was “insulted and angry” when it was suggested that she switch to the playwriting program. She refused. “Then I left college and I never really acted again and I only wrote plays. They were right.”
Though she spent five years “covered in liquor and lemon slices,bartending”,by her mid-20s,her work was beginning to be noticed,with two short plays –Essay,about gender politics in academia,andThe Russian Play,a romance set in Stalin’s Russia – winning acclaim,before her first full-length play,East of Berlin,about the children of Holocaust survivors and Nazi war criminals,premiered at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre in 2007.
As her star has risen steadily since,the “indie sensation” and “wunderkind of Canadian theatre” has also ploughed a particular furrow,telling stories from a distinctly female perspective;This Is War explores sexual harassment within the military,Bunny is “a refutation of Victorian ideas of how you tell stories about women”,andWhat A Young Wife Ought to Know covers the Canadian birth-control movement of the 1920s.
She doesn’t pretend for a moment that it hasn’t been a struggle to get those stories told in an area of the arts in which female voices have long been under-represented. “At the beginning of my career,I was told,‘We already have one women’s issues play in the season,so we can’t afford to do another’,” she says,rolling her eyes expansively. “Whole seasons would go by in Canada during which major theatres would have no plays by women.”
Part of the problem,she believes,is the dearth of prominent female playwrights. “Can you think of a dead female playwright?” she posits. I can’t. “When I ask that,somebody always says ‘Caryl Churchill’,” she says,laughing. “Caryl Churchill is still alive.”
But the proof,she says,is in the ticket sales. “Every time I’ve put on a show that’s female-driven and about women,it sells out. It’s a commercial reality. Women are interested in their own stories,unsurprisingly.”
Moscovitch also,rather more cautiously,admits that,“at the beginning of my career,there was a feeling that the price of admission was a certain amount of sexual harassment. No doubt they thought I was a good writer,but they also thought I was a woman in my 20s,on the right side of attractive,” she says.
“And this feels such an outrageous thing to say out loud,but I worked in bars for five years,and I learned how to deal with CEOs who were hitting on me but who I also wanted to tip me well,and I found that skill set transferred beautifully to artistic directors.”
Has it got better? Moscovitch says she hopes so,but she’s not the person to ask. “I’m 42,and I have more power now. The question would have to go to a woman in her 20s,who has no visibility or power.”
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Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes is very much a part of these complex,nuanced conversations about consent and sexual power. “It is a weird line – sex can be consensual,but still involve an abuse of power,” says Moscovitch. “And I think that’s something huge to have come out of #MeToo – that we now have language around these things.” In a way that we simply didn’t,I note,when Monica Lewinsky,an intern,was publicly pilloried for an affair with the President of the United States.
Moscovitch puts her head in her hands. Lewinsky,she says,might be “the most misunderstood figure of the 20th century”. “It’s extraordinary,and I’m shocked by it every time it happens,” she says. “The very worst of our misogyny is lodged in that desire to blame women for men’s actions.”
Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes is at The Sumner,Southbank Theatre,March 6 – April 1.