sharleen kalayil, amanda leblanc & rachel hastings. photo by bruce dienes.
Most Nova Scotians were introduced to Mona Parsons’ story for the first time earlier this year when she was the Nova Scotia Heritage Day Honouree. Parsons was born in Middleton, Nova Scotia and raised in Wolfville, and she was the only known female Canadian civilian imprisoned in Nazi Germany. Incredibly, she was able to negotiate her way out of a death sentence (death by firing squad), and went on to survive the war. Ryanne Chisholm, the director of LunaSea Theatre/ SarAndipity Theatre’s production of The Bitterest Time: The War Story of Mona Parsons, who hails from Antigonish, said that she too had only just become aware of Parsons recently. Similarly, Amanda LeBlanc, who plays Parsons in the play, and who is from Canning (even closer to Parsons hometown) says she was “dumbfounded” that this woman’s heroic story had gone unrecognized by Nova Scotians for so long. “Even now when I’m talking to people about the play,” LeBlanc adds, “often they still will ask, ‘Mona Who?’
For Andria Hill-Lehr, who wrote this play with Sarah Jane Blenkhorn, the newfound interest in Mona Parsons is the culmination of over twenty years of research piecing together Parsons’ story from old letters, photographs, records, and an interview with Baroness Wendelien van Boetzelaer, who shared a cell with Parsons during their imprisonment by the Nazis. Hill-Lehr has also written the book Mona Parsons, originally published in 2000. For Chisholm, she says she is “so honoured and excited to be directing this piece about someone who very easily could be one of our greatest Nova Scotian heroes.”
What lends Parsons’ story so well to the stage is how unbelievable the facts of her life were. Chisholm explains, “She was a woman who left home at a young age. She decided to go to New York City, and she became a chorus girl, a dancer, in the Ziegfeld Follies. She then became a nurse, and then married a millionaire, and moved to Europe. Then she and her husband were part of this circuit in the Netherlands, under the Nazi occupation in World War II, that helped smuggle downed Allied airmen out of the country and onto boats, which would then meet British submarines and take them home. Little did they know a Nazi had infiltrated the ring, and they were caught. She was a prisoner of the Nazis for four years, and what is the most unbelievable is that when she escaped the prison during a very large bombing in 1945, she walked 100 kilometres through the front, pretending that she couldn’t speak and had some type of intellectual disability, so that no one would notice that her German had a Canadian accent, and then she crossed the border and the first group of soldiers that she came across were the North Nova Scotian Highlanders. The truth really is stranger than fiction, in this case.”
Mona Parsons was smart and resourceful. She used every resource that she had available to her, from her acting talent to her status as a millionaire’s wife, to stay alive. LeBlanc adds, “Mona and her husband’s social status meant that she had a lot in common with General Franz Christiansen, the highest-ranking German general in Holland, the man she wrote to for an appeal of her death sentence. They had friends in common, and had traveled in similar circles before the war- and so she used the angle with him that if the world were different, if there wasn’t a war going on, they might have been friends. The Nazis kept her in the dark about her fate for weeks, and every time the door opened, she thought it was the firing squad coming for her.”
The play examines the way World War II impacted an array of different women. Chisholm says, “We see these amazing female heroes within the prison system, who are caring for one another. Mona had been a nurse, so she takes care of other prisoners, she smuggled food to prisoners who needed it, and tried to gain favour with the woman who was running the prison she was in, Vechta. She resisted at every stage.” Yet, the play is also interested in the other women Parsons encounters. Chisholm asks, “What does the female German farmer experience? Because it’s her job to feed the troops, but she’s still living in the bombing zone, and what does that do to her own Patriotism, while she’s still trying to be a good wife and mother and German? We also have a very terrifying Nazi guard who is female. In the 1940s women were disenfranchised and so, in many cases, the Nazis gave women of the lower classes jobs as guards, and suddenly they had this absolute power after having lived their whole lives in a world without any. I find that very interesting, because one of the things we need to get to with Feminism, is also looking at the idea that women can be just as awful as men; we just don’t know their stories. History hasn’t included them.”
Hill-Lehr was lucky in her research that Parsons was an avid letter writer and that many of her letters have survived. A lot of the text from Parsons’ own writing has been woven throughout the play, so that some of the words we hear are Mona’s own. Chisholm and LeBlanc both characterize the piece as a “Memory Play.” LeBlanc says, “Mona had a vivid imagination, and the play is really set up so that the stark reality of her present moment in prison is in greyscale, and her memories come about in technicolour. She had a gorgeous sense of humour, she was seen as being eccentric and entertaining. I don’t know if these are often qualities that are seen as strength, but she had the ability to connect with people and allow them to escape with her into their imaginations for a time.” Chisholm adds, “As Wendelien, our narrator, gets to know her, Mona uses songs and poems to keep them both sane, and Mona is actually able to walk out of her cell and into these memories. So, the audience is actually able to experience her beautiful life before the war: with her husband and dogs in Laren, in the Netherlands, and also her time as a showgirl. It is wonderful to get to see Amanda LeBlanc tread that path. There’s not a lot of people who can take on a role where you have to go from someone who is experiencing the horrific experiences of being in a Nazi prison camp, and then literally be able to pick herself up and dance her way back to being able to feel the lights of Broadway on her face. The story has a lot of light and joy in it, because that was Mona’s superpower. The light and joy she was able to bring to such horrific circumstances is what made her a hero. It’s how she saved others.”
Both Chisholm and LeBlanc are struck by the parallels between these events set in World War II and events happening in the world today. Chisholm says, “Mona speaks of families being separated and that she can’t imagine taking babies away from their mothers. With the modern lens, you can’t help but see the modern-day resurgence of Fascism and Neo-Nazis. You can also see what Mona was able to accomplish. That small acts of resistance can have an effect. No, she didn’t save the whole world, or manage to take down Hitler alone, but she did manage to help a lot of people survive and she survived herself.” LeBlanc agrees, “It’s about citizens resisting in small ways. Many people did what they could to take a stand, like choosing not to knit socks for Nazis, or finding ways to sabotage Nazism in their communities. We know so few stories of women in wartime, and now there is more space for these stories. I think knowing about a woman like Mona Parsons, who was from our province, makes us feel really proud.”
LeBlanc adds that while she physically is not like Mona Parsons was, she feels that she is like her in spirit.
It’s a spirit, and a story, that has waited a long time to be shared with Nova Scotia and the World.
The Bitterest Time: The War Story of Mona Parsons is on tour at the following theatres:
WOLFVILLE: September 5th to 8th at 8:00pm. Al Whittle Theatre (450 Main Street, Wolfville). For Tickets Please Call: 902.542.9511.
TRURO: September 9th at 8:00pm. Marigold Cultural Centre. (605 Prince Street, Truro). For Tickets Click Here or Call 902.897.4004.
ANTIGONISH: September 12th & 13th at 8:00pm. The Bauer Theatre (5015 Chapel Square, Antigonish). For Tickets Please Call 902.867.3333.
PICTOU: September 14th at 7:30pm. DeCoste Performing Arts Centre (99 Water Street, Pictou). For Tickets Click Here or Call 902.485.8848.
HALIFAX: September 15th & 16th at 2:00pm & 8pm. Neptune Theatre Scotiabank Studio Stage. (1593 Argyle Street, the doors closest to Pizza Pizza). For Tickets Click Here or Call 902.429.7070.
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