You know those rare people who are so down-to-earth and easy to talk to that you feel like you’ve known them a long time after just a few minutes of conversation? Sarah Louise Turner is one of those people. The SFU professor and stage actress is currently starring in Sandi Johnson’s play People Like Us, playing at the Firehall Arts Centre until Nov. 16.
People Like Us is a one-woman play that deals with Gulf War Syndrome and one family’s process of coping. Little discussed, Gulf War Syndrome is something that many people developed when the war was over. Symptoms are incredibly varied — from insomnia, to cancer, to one case where a woman’s bones actually expanded, making her grow larger. Such variety made it particularly difficult for sufferers to get any of the support they needed from their government.
“The argument in the United States was ‘well, we can’t give you compensation for this because we can’t call it a syndrome until we can say ‘these are the symptoms that it has resulted in,’” says Turner. “I think it’s really interesting that the play is told from the partner and family’s point of view, and the impact this has not only on the veteran, but on the veteran’s family. It really destroys the entire family.”
The story is not just about one veteran’s struggles with the health and psychological issues that go along with war, it’s also about, “one woman finding her strength and how she maneuvers and finds her way through the challenging blows that life can strike,” Turner says. Having the partner as the primary narrator in the play allows the audience insight into not only her husband’s experience of the war, but also her experience of it when he returns.
During the entire one hour and 15 minute play, Turner is the only person on stage; this is the first time she’s been in a one-woman show. When I ask her about the experience, she tells me, “It’s a huge learning opportunity. It’s been incredible and very challenging . . . and all of the challenges that I knew it would provide, it has definitely provided.” She laughs as she says this, and tells me that the hardest thing for her was to learn her lines without the back and forth energy that she is accustomed to when there are other actors on stage.
Another challenge is keeping her own energy up for the full show: “It’s got to come from her [the character’s] fight.” Turner draws on the energy of her character’s struggle of “having to really fight for [her husband’s] life, and fight for the truth, and having to fight for all these things that she expected someone to give her. And it’s not happening.”
“It’s a cautionary tale. It’s an important political piece, particularly right now, with all of the potential cutbacks in veteran funding. Warfare is changing drastically, and the implications of war are very different now from what they were in the past . . . we never know what we’re going to get in the next war. I also just think it’s a really beautiful story about love and partnership and what it takes.”
You can catch People Like Us at the Firehall Arts Centre until Nov. 16.
