Jessica B. Hill’s Pandora returns to where it all started

Jessica B. Hill as the titular character in the 2023 production of Pandora in Winnipeg. The Here For Now-commissioned play returns for its inaugural winter season this year.

CONNOR LUCZKA, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Stratford Festival favourite Jessica B. Hill didn’t consider herself a writer, though she knew she loved writing. Only a few years later, Hill is now considered one of Canada’s most exciting burgeoning playwrights, having been profiled by the Globe and Mail and featured on CBC Radio’s Q program.

Hill’s sudden rise is in part due to the Here For Now Theatre-commissioned play Pandora, which returns for its inaugural winter season this year.

Pandora tells the story, or perhaps re-tells the story, of the iconic mythical character of Pandora, the ancient Greek woman who opened a jar (though commonly referred to as a box) and unleashed all the evils of humanity into the world. Hill’s story explores the “unexpected connections between ancient myth and modern science, where quantum entanglement collides with the mysteries of being human,” according to Here For Now’s website.

But in many ways, for all its quarks, it is about the nature of uncertainty and interconnection, as Hill explained.

“It’s a play about hope,” Hill explained. “What binds us together? Why do people gather? Why do theatre? How quantum mechanics and science and art are actually closer together.”

Hill wrote Pandora during the pandemic after Here For Now’s founder Fiona Mongillo encouraged her to try her hand at writing. Although not staged that year, it was the subject of a recorded reading in 2021.

Pandora ultimately premiered in Winnipeg in 2023 for the Shakespeare in the Ruins theatre company, a co-production with Prairie Theatre Exchange.

“What really kicked it up a notch is they found this incredible designer called jaymez from Winnipeg as well to design the show, both the set projections and the soundscape,” Hill said. “He took this play and catapulted it beyond my wildest dreams of what this thing could be. And so that's what's coming back to Here For Now, is the fully realized version of this thing he built. So much of Pandora is about the box, right? … He built a steel box that was about the size of the black box theatre on an angle, like on a tilt, like it had just crashed into the black box.”

Everything about that knockout run, from director Rodrigo Beilfuss to jaymez’s designs, returns for this newest run. Like all Here For Now productions, Pandora will be an intimate show where the audience is front and centre to the titular character, played by Hill in this one-woman production.

It is the kind of show which Hill said perfectly fits in a city like this one, complementing the world-famous Stratford Festival’s grand-scale productions.

“It’s so important to have something like (Here For Now), where artists can tackle different disciplines they might not necessarily want to explore in the larger context,” Hill said.

To that effect, Hill thanked Mongillo for her initial push to get into writing, as well as for inviting the production back to Stratford.

Pandora runs from Nov. 5-16, with its official opening night being Nov. 7. It takes over the Rose McQueen Stage at 24 St. Andrew St.

Those interested can purchase tickets at https://purchase.herefornowtheatre.com/Events.