New Hamburg writer sees her play, Dancing on the Elephant, on the silver screen

The poster for Dancing on the Elephant, written by New Hamburg’s Lisa Hagen and starring Sheila McCarthy, Mary Walsh and Amanda Brugel. Photo courtesy of Lisa Hagen

Galen Simmons, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

After 15 years of starts and stops, high hopes and minor setbacks, New Hamburg playwright Lisa Hagen is enjoying her time on the red carpet as her play about two women reclaiming their freedoms and their lives from the constraints of old age is taking its rightful place on the silver screen.

Starring Sheila McCarthy (Women Talking) as Nora, Mary Walsh (This Hour Has 22 Minutes) as Edna and Amanda Brugel (The Handmaid’s Tale) as Nurse Barbara, Dancing on the Elephant had its world premiere at the Atlantic International Film Festival in Halifax, N.S., on Sept. 13, where it won two awards – Outstanding Performance for Walsh and Best Editor for Angela Baker. Since then, the film has been making the rounds at film festivals across Canada.

And while Hagen is finally getting the chance to revel in the success of the film she wrote and had a hand in shaping, she told the Gazette it was a hard road to get to this point.

“Fifteen years ago, I wrote a one-act play and it won a contest in Kitchener. We were able to produce it and I had three lovely friends help me out, and one of them happened to have a theatre in Cape Breton,” Hagen said. “She said, ‘Please turn it into a full-length play and I will put it on.’ So, I wrote it out as a full-length play and she was very helpful … in developing it. At the same time, I thought, ‘I’m going to write this as a movie as well.’

“It was getting a favourable response when we put it on, for sure.”

While the play went on to be produced for Theatre Baddeck in Nova Scotia, and it was performed in New Hamburg for Hagen’s hometown audience, the screenplay began picking up steam, winning numerous awards, and ultimately got picked up by a production company out of Colorado in 2018. For two years, the company held exclusive rights to produce the screenplay while it tried to raise the money. In 2020, Hagen got the call that the money had been raised and they were looking to shoot in New York state with leading lady Olympia Dukakis onboard as the star.

As pandemic restrictions made shooting more costly, Dukakis’ unexpected death in May 2021 put the production on hold. In 2022, Hagen said she convinced the directors to shoot the film on Cape Breton to take advantage of both the lower cost for film production and the filming subsidies offered by the Province of Nova Scotia.

Finally, in the early months of February 2024, shooting began on Cape Breton and production was  underway. Unlike some film producers who don’t involve writers beyond the creation of an original screenplay, Hagen said the directors and producers kept her involved every step of the way.

“We shot it March of 2024 and I went out there for a few days, just because I was nosy,” Hagen said. “After 15 years, this was my baby. Nova Scotia was beautiful and the people were so hospitable, as we all know, and it was very interesting to watch how it’s put together.

“I have a background in corporate video, so I had been around shoots before, but this was just up a notch.”

After the film finished shooting, Hagen said it took almost a year to edit before it could be packaged up and sent to as many film festivals as possible for consideration. Now that it is having its initial screenings, Hagen says audiences are really connecting with the story.

“It’s about two old ladies who try to escape their retirement home with themes of dementia, themes of living your life to the fullest at whatever stage you’re at, and a theme of agism – that people are still the same inside, they’re just older – and having self-agency,” Hagen said. “ … They go out and have one more big adventure.

“Now that they’ve seen it, people are saying, ‘Yeah, I’ve had to do that with my parents or grandparents.’ It seems to catch a wide swath of people from younger people who identify (with this story) because of their grandparents, people who are dealing with their parents and also people who are looking at (moving to a retirement home) in the face. (I want people to come away from this film thinking) we have to do better than just warehouse our seniors. We’re kind of standing on their shoulders – we’re here because of them – and we have to have a better system than what we have currently.”

Once the film has completed the festival circuit, Hagen said the producers will use the buzz generated to find a distributor, at which point it will become available to watch commercially.