Isle of Demons blends hope and grief at Guild Festival Theatre
iPhoto caption: Kiera Publicover in Isle of Demons. Images courtesy of Guild Festival Theatre.
When Kiera Publicover first saw the audition notice for Isle of Demons, she was immediately drawn to the play’s oceanic setting.
“My family’s from the East Coast, and there’s something to be said about stories that happen near the ocean,” she told Intermission. “I just find them so entrancing — there’s something so magical about the world that exists off land.”
But it was the complexity of the piece’s main character — whom Publicover will portray during the play’s run at the Guild Park Theatre from August 8–25 — that she found particularly inspiring.
Written by Governor General Award-winning playwright Robert Chafe, Isle of Demons tells the true story of Marguerite de la Roque, a young woman of French nobility who was brought over by ship in 1542 with the intention to settle in what would eventually become Montreal. But after drama with her lover ensues onboard, the ship abandons Marguerite on a remote island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, leaving her to fend for herself.
It’s a heavy story that Publicover says frequently brings her to tears. But while it’s undoubtedly a tragedy, she emphasizes that there is much more to it than just sadness.
“It’s a really beautiful story of this young woman coming to terms with grief and guilt and hope, and I think the biggest takeaway of this whole piece is the hope through everything,” she said.
Originally from Toronto, Publicover co-founded Arrowwood Theatre Company in 2018 and has since worked as its co-artistic director. Much of her work involves exploring themes of femininity and gender, and she says she feels proud to be a part of a team bringing what she calls “a success story for women” to Toronto’s stages with Isle of Demons.
While Publicover was attracted to the piece for its strong female protagonist, portraying a character based on a real person can be particularly intimidating. She says she approaches this “wonderful challenge” by doing her best to honour the very real feelings and experiences Marguerite must have had.
“We take a relatively modern approach with the character — she’s a little sassy, she’s a little outspoken — but at the end of the day I go into every rehearsal with the mindset that we want to do her justice and we want to honour her struggle,” she says.
Diving deep into the physiology of a character whose sanity is slowly coming undone is difficult work, Publicover says, but ultimately incredibly rewarding. The process has allowed her to gain a profound understanding of what Marguerite endured, helping her to convey that experience to viewers with compassion and empathy.
Working on the piece has been an especially creatively fulfilling pursuit because the team has been so willing to play around with different ideas, she explains, all the while addressing issues depicted in the story with the utmost sensitivity. The cast has been working with intimacy director Leslie McBay, which Publicover says has greatly enhanced both the experience itself and the final product.
Director Tyler J. Seguin, meanwhile, has done the challenging work of mining the hope, humour, and love out of every moment of pain in Isle of Demons, Publicover says, allowing audience members to face grief alongside Marguerite in a way that is both raw and cathartic.
“People who have experienced grief will tell you there is a hope that underlies it,” she says. “You go through this with her, but there’s a little dose of hope in there that I think we all need.”
The play features monsters, romance, and ships, but at the end of the day it’s an inspirational story of survival, Publicover says. And at a time when the world is filled with grief, she says Isle of Demons offers audiences an opportunity to explore the complex, coinciding feelings of grief and hope in a communal, live theatre setting — something she believes we could all benefit from at the moment.
As an added bonus, Guild Festival Theatre stages its productions outdoors, allowing the cast to perform the play in a setting that is true to the heart of the story. Or, in Publicover’s words: “how it was meant to be told.”
“It’s a really powerful piece for right now,” she says. “We see so much grief going on around us all of the time and sometimes it feels impossible to fight through it, but at the end of the day, it’s the hope that gets her through.”
Isle of Demons runs August 8-25 at Guild Park. Tickets are available here.
Mira Miller
Mira is an arts, lifestyle, and health freelance writer based in Toronto. She covers intersectional feminism, issues affecting the 2SLGBTQ+ community, theatre, body image, and more. In her spare time, you can find her listening to the soundtrack of a musical, watching Broad City, or dreaming about her next meal.
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