At the Calgary Petroleum Club, a stage play reflects tension, polarization about Canada’s energy transition

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Four diners are locked in a debate that folks in the downtown of Alberta’s largest city know all too well, and emotions are raw.

Well-known oil and gas advocate Michael Binnion, over his meal within the oak-panelled confines of the Calgary Petroleum Club, is making a forceful case for the industry he insists is central to Canada’s shared prosperity. Adam Scott, a Toronto-based environmental activist, loses his patience with him, saying many of Mr. Binnion’s assertions amount to climate-change denial.

Another at the table, Kaella-Marie Earle, admits to an internal struggle over her career as an engineer for a pipeline company. It’s a sector she says has in the past failed to live up to her ideals as an Indigenous woman, but where she has found a core of colleagues dedicated to making a difference from inside.

This leads to tense exchanges about one of Canada’s most fraught issues, the energy transition, as meal courses are served. Some of the divides seem unbridgeable, at least at first.

The twist on this November evening is that this is a stage play based on an actual conversation. The lines were being delivered by actors in front of an audience of 80 people at the venerable 76-year-old Pete Club, where countless oil and gas deals have been inked.

This theatre of the perturbed is a production by Montreal’s Porte Parole. The group explores a range of hot topics using what it calls documentary theatre to highlight the polarization that’s growing throughout society, often amplified by social media. The producers have explored national identity, freedom of speech, race and economic disparity in productions around the world under the title, The Assembly.

This one is called Energy in Canada, and it features Bruce Dinsmore as Mr. Binnion, Julie Lumsden as Ms. Earle, Gordon Rand as Mr. Scott and Ruth Goodwin as a West Coast community organizer who goes by the pseudonym of Meredith. Porte Parole writers Brett Watson and Alex Ivanovici, as themselves, join them on stage to guide the discourse. It is directed by Chris Abraham, known for his work at the Stratford and Shaw festivals and Crow’s Theatre in Toronto.

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“When we do The Assembly, what we’re hoping is that just the contact with people who think differently are going to nudge us toward more intelligent conversation. And this isn’t just kind of altruistic like, ‘Oh, we should be nicer to each other,’” said Annabel Soutar, a Porte Parole playwright.

“We actually think that the sort of deterioration of public dialogue is having a negative impact on our activity in Canada, on our civil society, on our ability to educate kids properly. We believe that in face-to-face dialogue, people can be a little bit more sophisticated and nuanced.”

The play is based on a real dinner with the people being portrayed that took place in Montreal in June, 2023. The producers taped their discussion and later boiled it down into a script that features verbatim exchanges. The actors perform a version that highlights the participants’ views, conversation styles and even triggers within the charged topic.

The group, backed by Paul Desmarais III, chair of Quebec-based investment firm Sagard Holdings, has previously performed the energy play in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver, where, the actors say, audiences have skewed to the environmental side of the debate, backing a shift away from hydrocarbons.

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But Calgary on Nov. 6 offered a much different setting. The Pete Club audience comprised a mix of professionals steeped in the issue. Stalwarts of Calgary business and industry from Cenovus Energy, oil sands coalition Pathways Alliance, Bravo Target Safety and Roynat Capital bought tables. So did groups associated with clean tech and green energy, such as the Pembina Institute and Energy Futures Lab.

Bill Whitelaw, managing director of strategy and sustainability for data provider GeoLOGIC Systems and commentator on energy issues, was instrumental in bringing the production to the heart of the oil patch to shine a spotlight on the polarization.

“I was able, with very little discussion, to say this is something we should support. This is a real issue in the industry, not only when we talk among ourselves but when we talk to others,” he said.

The Assembly may not have shifted any positions on this evening, but it certainly held up a mirror to the audience.

Many energy denizens aligned with Mr. Binnion, who founded the pro-oil Modern Miracle Network. They feel pilloried by other Canadians for toiling in an industry they insist has provided the country with wealth and convenience everyone takes for granted. Executives say they get no credit for reducing environmental impact, including greenhouse gas emissions, as they go about producing oil and gas.

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During an audience participation section, much of the crowd applauded industry allies in their midst as they gave impassioned defences of the energy sector. Why, just look what the environmental movement has wrought, one said, pointing to some Alberta kids being so frightened by warnings of the climate’s wrath that they are unable to get out of bed.

The real-life Mr. Scott, director of Shift: Action for Pension Wealth and Planet Health, an initiative that pushes for pension funds to incorporate climate risks more rigorously in their investments, said it was “intense and stressful” to hear his own words recited back to him when he saw an earlier preview of the play in Montreal, but that he enjoyed it.

His biggest concern, however, is “that the audience might take away a ‘both sides’ view, wrongly assuming that the polarization on display was about personalities – and not a fundamental disagreement about reality” of the science behind climate change.

For Mr. Scott, that’s not up for debate.