Nearly 10 years ago, he publicly forgave his attacker. This play shares his complex journey since

One day in 2014, theatre director Jillian Keiley stumbled upon an article that was posted to a bulletin board at Ottawa's National Arts Centre, where she was artistic director of English Theatre at the time. It was about the sentencing of a man who violently stabbed another in a homophobic attack in Nova Scotia, paralyzing him from the waist down — but primarily, it was about how the victim, then-28-year-old Scott Jones, publicly forgave his attacker at the proceedings.

"I burst into tears. It was like something punched me on the side of the head," Keiley says.

"I couldn't get this story of this man out of my head. It was something I obsessed about for about a year."

Keiley was far from alone. The story hit headlines across the country as people reacted in astonishment to such a courageous act by Jones. In St. John's, Newfoundland, Robert Chafe — Keiley's creative partner and the artistic director of Artistic Fraud Theatre — was similarly transfixed on Jones' story and others that demonstrated an individual's Herculean feat of forgiveness.

"What deeply moves me about that is my incomprehension of how that could be," says Chafe. "What kind of person could have a heart that would allow them to do such an act of grace?"

The reality, once Chafe and Keiley met Jones in person, was far more complex than the heart-wrenching headlines they read would suggest. After that first example of Jones' emotional honesty and incredible vulnerability, the three collaborators continued to dive into the murkier aspects of such a bold act of forgiveness: for instance, the anger, hurt, frustration and sorrow that remains toward a world that allowed such an act to happen in the first place.

That complexity is on display in the new play I Forgive You, on now at the National Arts Centre. The production is a collaboration between Keiley as director, Chafe as playwright, and Jones as the source of the play's verbatim text, as well as the onstage director of a live children's choir. I Forgive You chronicles Jones' journey with forgiveness in the nearly 10 years since that day at the courthouse.

"This play certainly helped me understand that it's okay that forgiveness is not a one-time thing," says Jones. "It's a journey, and one that I'll be on for the rest of my life."

Through this work with Keiley and Chafe, Jones is revealing elements of that one choice he made in 2014 that he has never publicly shared before. And he hasn't been shy about his life since the sentencing, either — on how he felt his experience was handled by police in the 2018 documentary Love, Scott, on how his mental health is coping with his paralyzation, or on how his life's work in choral music and social justice isn't his only tool for living through his trauma.

"Immediately after the attack, I very quickly centered my rage on society — things like toxic masculinity and homophobia — and formed VOX: A Choir for Social Change. I very much dove into music paired with social justice work," he says. "But even with all of that work, I found myself back at square one after a few years, realizing I am really angry at Shane [Matheson, the attacker] and I am angry at what he did to me."

"I wouldn't want to label this play as one thing, as a work of social justice. It's a truthful and subjective exploration of what happened. I've kind of shied away from explicitly social justice activist work because I reached a point where I'm not sure that's serving me in the way that it did. And I need to allow myself to feel things that I didn't let myself feel initially."

Though Chafe was in charge of putting Jones' words and personality into a script to be performed by two actors, the creative team did find a way to make the real Jones present on stage — by directing a live children's choir performing music by Sigur Ros, a band that brought comfort to Jones during his recovery and formed a soundtrack for Love, Scott. 

"They're the lifejacket through this very rocky journey, through all this pain and grief and also hope," says Jones of the children's choir. "We're witnessing this really difficult story that absolutely is connected to the future and the change that we want to see in society, and who's sitting up there singing the music? The future."

"That's something that people don't know maybe until they get there — what a fine musician and what a fine conductor Scott is," adds Keiley. "You'll hear it when you see the show. Scott is kind of magic with them."

Having Jones appear as part of the play was important not only to Chafe and Keiley in telling his story, but in communicating the show's big idea to the audience: that forgiveness is an evolving, unpredictable, and ongoing choice.

"It's alive," Keiley says. "[The play] really asks the audience to question themselves and their own relationship with forgiveness. It's hard to know what to do with that."

I Forgive You's Ottawa run follows a brief debut in St. John's in August, where the team saw audiences react to the show's complicated portrayal of trauma and forgiveness with laughter, silence, and intense discussion.

"I was watching parents come out and be reflective on their relationship to their kids. I was watching kids come out and be reflective on their relationship to their parents," says Chafe. "I was watching people come out and navigate those consequential relationships in their life that were marred by an inability to forgive."

"It's certainly the most important play I've ever worked on," says Keiley. "I think it's extraordinarily human."

"That's the gift of Scott. He was honest with me on the first day. He continues to be honest. And now he's honest with the audience."