Kris Joseph. Photo courtesy of Kris Joseph.

Kris Joseph loves to be part of politically opinionated theatre. Yet the play he’s about to help open April 13 – Facts at the Great Canadian Theatre Company – has raised in him a little trepidation. It’s the world premiere of a murder mystery by Arthur Milner, and it brings into focus millenia of Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.

“I welcome the discussion, and even the argument.  But I have no control over how the audience will respond to the play, and that makes me a little anxious — especially since I’m playing the hard-line Jewish settler,” he writes in his entry on Struts and Frets.

“The effects of this are deeply visible in the play, and I anticipate strong reactions from our audience as well.  As we barrel through our last days of technical rehearsals and into our opening week, I’m wondering if we’ll talk about the abstracted themes of the play, or if we’ll end up trying to “fix” the Middle East at every talk-back session.”

This is an intensely personal view of where Joseph’s mind is as he prepares to take the stage and couldn’t be a better prologue for theatre goers.