Tom Jackson and John Mann appear in Beyond Eden (David Cooper/Vancouver Playhouse)

Composer Bruce Ruddell has been wanting to tell the story of the last totem poles of Haida Gwaii for almost 30 years.

Ruddell, a Victoria-based composer known for his choral and chamber music, heard the story of the 1957 trip to take down the poles at the abandoned settlement at Ninstints on the Queen Charlotte Islands from his friend, Haida carver Bill Reid.

The story of that journey that emerges in Beyond Eden —the new musical that opens in Vancouver on Thursday — is bigger and more spectacular than Ruddell ever dreamed.

Created by Theatre Calgary and Vancouver Playhouse and starring aboriginal actor Tom Jackson and Spirit of the West's John Mann, it is a rock musical with a strong Haida influence. Ruddell composed the score with rock musician Bill Henderson.

"I interviewed everybody on that expedition — everybody said it changed their lives," Ruddell told CBC News of the 1957 journey, which brought the totems to University of British Columbia's Museum of Anthropology.

No one was more changed than Reid himself. He was working as a CBC broadcaster when he accompanied anthropologist Wilson Duff to Ninstints on his mission to preserve the totem poles. He decided to abandon broadcasting and become a carver, following traditions of his Haida ancestors that were almost forgotten.

"My favourite scene is this.… song called Carving, and it's a moment in which the Bill Reid character looks at these poles and he begins to understand that he has to have the poles because they need to teach his hands to see," Ruddell said. "That's what Bill used to talk about — that he needed those poles to teach him."

Reid, who died in 1998, became celebrated for resurrecting the Haida arts, and his carvings and sculptures were collected internationally. Duff became fascinated by First Nations spirituality, but found the loss of the culture increasingly disturbing and eventually ended his own life.

"Wilson began this spirit quest into the spirituality of the Northwest coast and it ended in tragedy," Ruddell said.

Cameron MacDuffee and John Mann in Beyond Eden (David Cooper/Vancouver Playhouse)

Beyond Eden fictionalizes that story arc and condenses the journey of each character into a three-day period in which they take down the totem poles. The totems are a strong presence on stage, with multimedia effects used to conjure images of newly imagined carvings.

Director Dennis Garnhum said Ruddell presented him with a script with "impossible stage directions," but that huge challenge has been met by designer Bretta Gerecke.

"How do you put totem poles on stage. How do you make a Haida village come to life?" he said.

Video projections on the straight poles placed on stage create the impression of carvings, an effect that had audiences at the preview performance gasping.

"The idea is to suggest rather than replicate," Garnhum told CBC News.

The scene where the totem poles come down has particular resonance.

"The staging is done in a very simple and poetic way," Garnhum said. "We see the tubes coming down in slow motion, and it's so heartbreaking because we know what it signifies."

Garnhum estimates the cost of the production, which was workshopped for 18 months across the country to get it right, was more than $1 million.

Great partners

Ruddell has prepared several versions of this same story in several different forms since the early 1980s.

In 1984, he wrote a 15-minute oratorio and a later 90-minute composition that was performed with the Vancouver Chamber Choir and Haida musician and now B.C. Lieutenant-Governor Steven Point. Then Broadway producer Hal Prince suggested he turn the story into a musical theatre production to reach a much wider audience.

The limitation was that Ruddell had no background as a songwriter, despite his years as a composer. Enter Bill Henderson, singer and guitarist with Chilliwack and an experienced producer and musical director.

"I went to Saltspring [Island] and knocked on his door and we got along like a house on fire. We were fighting over the piano in minutes. We've been close friends ever since," Ruddell said.

Henderson is music director for Beyond Eden, which is accompanied by a five-piece band playing keyboards, percussion, guitars, bass and viola. He also helped polish the songs.

"I wanted a really contemporary sound in the sense of being able to have the feeling of rock — a lot of my work has been for orchestras and choirs — so there is a bit of scoring that has a new sound to it," Ruddell said.

The score also includes two traditional Haida songs, Spirit Song and War Song, performed by two young Haida singer-dancers and Jackson.

Ruddell has had an affinity for First Nations stories throughout his career and worked with Haida artist Gwaai Edenshaw to get an endorsement of the Council of the Haida Nation and from the chiefs and elders of Haida Gwaii for Beyond Eden.

Jackson, a singer as well as an actor known for his role in North of 60, plays the Watchman, an important figure in Haida mythology who guards the villages. Mann, the singer with folk group Spirit of the West, plays the anthropologist figure. Cameron MacDuffee is the Bill Reid character.

Beyond Eden is being performed in Vancouver as part of the 2010 Cultural Olympiad.Beyond Eden started previews in Vancouver on Jan. 16 and runs through Feb. 6. The production will then move to Theatre Calgary from Feb. 16 to March 7.