Matara: The Elephant Play (Prairie Play)

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 is an Edmonton-based playwright and screenwriter, who has written nearly twenty stage plays as well as short films and television drama. She works steadily as a story consultant and dramaturg, and has taught screenwriting and playwriting for a variety of institutions. Conni's published work includes six of her plays and a comic memoir, Roadtripping: On the Move with the Buffalo Gals. Her writing has been recognized by AMPIA, the Academy of Cinema and Television, the Betty Mitchell Awards, the Writers Guild of Alberta and the Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Awards.