At a crumbling zoo, an elephant keeper, a security guard, and a newly hired media consultant have differing views over what should be done about the zoo’s main attraction, the aging Sri Lankan elephant Matara. Matara is deteriorating by the day following the loss of her companion elephant Cheerio and a petition is circulating to try to force the zoo’s management to move her to a sanctuary. Karen, Matara’s keeper, argues adamantly that the zoo is Matara’s home and family, and that she is not strong enough to travel. Romney, the enthusiastic but increasingly stressed media consultant, thinks more about donations and galas than Matara’s life, while Marcel the security guard and an international graduate student struggling in the last stages of his thesis, understands the perspective of the protestors even as he seeks to protect the zoo’s employees.

Weaving between the perspectives of public relations, zoos as unique spaces of human animal interaction, and the question of whether or not zoos should exist at all, Conni Massing’s latest play takes inspiration from real life debates that surround Lucy, the lone elephant at the Edmonton Valley Zoo, asking poignant questions about our relationships with animals, and the power dynamics and instability that surround them.

elephant keeper, argues that the zoo is Matara’s home now, after so long away from the wild, and that the elephant is too weak to travel. Romney, the enthusiastic (and stressed) consultant, thinks more about donations and galas rather than Matara’s life, while Marcel the security guard empathizes with the protestors even as he must protect the zoo’s employees from increasingly volatile protests. Weaving between the perspectives of public relations, the importance of allowing humans to experience animal encounters as well as whether zoos should even exist at all, Conni Massing’s latest play takes inspiration from real life debates on captive elephants to ask poignant questions about our relationships with animals and the power dynamics that surround them.

Conni Massing is an award-winning writer working in theatre, film, radio, and television. Recent stage credits include the hit comedy The Myth of Summer, which premiered at Alberta Theatre Projects in 2005; Homesick, which premiered at Edmontonâ??s Workshop West Theatre; and an adaptation of Bruce Allen Poweâ??s The Aberhart Summer (Alberta Theatre Projects/Citadel Theatre). Massing has worked as a television series story editor on The Beat, North of 60, The Adventures of Shirley Holmes, and as a story consultant on Anaid Productionsâ??s documentary series Taking it Off and Family Restaurant. Conniâ??s comedic short film Invisible was produced in the fall of 2007. She is currently adapting W.O. Mitchellâ??s Jake and the Kid for Theatre Calgary and writing a book about road trips.

Conni has been playwright-in-residence at Theatre Network, Playwrightsâ?? Workshop Montréal, and the National Theatre School of Canada. She now teaches both playwriting and screenwriting in the Department of Drama at the University of Alberta. A proud member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada, sheâ??s also a regional representative for the Writers Guild of Canada. Massingâ??s writing has been recognized by the Alberta Motion Pictures Industries Association (AMPIA), the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, the Betty Mitchell Theatre Awards, and the Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Theatre Awards. A recipient of a Queenâ??s Jubilee Medal (for contributions to the arts), Massing was recently honoured as one of one hundred people who have made a contribution to Alberta theatre in the last one hundred years.

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Praise for Matara: The Elephant Play

“Massing weaves [this] tale with her customary finesse.” LIANE FAULDER, The Edmonton Journal

“The thorny idea of ‘home,’ what it means, what it can legitimately claim to possess, what it plants in the heart, is everywhere in Conni Massing’s provocative, thoughtful, absorbing — and genuinely strange — new play Matara.” LIZ NICHOLLS, 12thnight.ca

“Massing sure knows how to tell a story.” COLIN MACLEAN, Gigcity.ca