Suicidal comedy?

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Pollak knows what she is talking about. (TREVOR HAGAN / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)

Penny Pollak woke up in a bathtub shivering, her clothes soaked, to the sound of her boyfriend's repeated inquiries, "Are you all right?"

The New Yorker lied about needing a shower.

"That night I took a lot of drugs and too many pills," says Pollak about the episode three years ago in New York City. "That night, after I dried off and came to, I started writing about a girl in a washtub who wanted to die."

That character and scene became the centrepiece of her play No Traveler, a one-woman drama making its Canadian debut at the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival. It's about a woman who commits suicide and then finds herself headed for hell. She can escape eternal damnation if she can persuade people about to kill themselves to reconsider. The hour-long monologue's subtitle is a A Comedy about Suicide.

Is that supposed to be funny?

"I grew up in a family with a very twisted sense of humour," she says during a recent interview.

The 27-year-old credits/blames her father for passing that down to her during their late-night discussions about life and death. What he instilled in her more than anything was the knowledge that laughter is the great healer, she says.

"No Traveler is a comedy about suicide because without laughter you might as well kill yourself," she says. "While the subject matter is taken very seriously, the reason we are able to laugh is because the victims are not the punchline. Life is."

When Pollak was a girl, a close family member divulged the details of her suicide attempt.

"She knew I needed to hear it," she says. "She knew talking about it was the only way to help. I've had too many people in my life attempt and sadly succeed at killing themselves. It needs to be talked about.

"Suicide is a very selfish act but when you're in it, it's hard to see that. You feel so alone and part of why I do the play is to hopefully connect with people and remind them that they're not alone."

Pollak developed her script over several years in the New York City indie theatre scene. She hosts an open-mike night at Under St. Marks Theatre, where she tested new material in front of an audience. Eventually No Traveler surfaced off-Broadway before it headed to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

"I was very nervous taking it out of the country for the first time," she recalls. "But without a doubt I found it had a universal reaction. As humans we naturally will cry when we want to laugh and laugh when we want to cry. Without comedy, tragedy is sad."

Pollak discovered the fringe festival here through ex-Winnipegger Stephanie Plaitin, a U of W graduate whom she worked with at the NYC Frigid Festival. Plaitin talked up the fringe festival to the point Pollak had to come.

Simultaneously Pollak is working on a film adaptation of No Traveler with Grammy Award-winning director Tony Kaye (American History X, Detachment). The "violent and traumatic event" that preceded her suicide attempt -- but which she has yet to talk about publicly -- is the crux of the movie.

"He pushed me to go much deeper and much more personal than I ever went with the play," she says.

Coming up with a title was also difficult but Pollak eventually opted to borrow the words of that "ultimate suicidal character," Hamlet. In his 'To be or not to be' speech, Shakespeare's great Dane says,

"... To grunt and sweat under a weary life

But that the dread of something after death

The undiscovered country from whose bourn

NO TRAVELER returns, puzzles the will

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

kevin.prokosh@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 16, 2011 G5