Richie Wilcox
Last night I was at Alderney Landing Theatre for Eastern Front Theatre’s Early Stages Festival, which is an opportunity for audiences to hear and see new work that is still in development. There were four Work In Progress showings over the four day festival, three physically at Alderney Landing, and one on-demand online. There were also workshops, and social and special events in conjunction with the festival. I took in a snippet sort of teaser staged reading of The Dead Letter Office from Popcorn Galaxies, who are based in Vancouver, a staged reading of Richie Wilcox’s full-length new play Coal Bowl Queen from Heist, and a first reading of a snippet of EcoFuturist Dispatches by For Ensemble Collective, which is free to watch online.
After chatting with June Fukumura and Keely O’Brien about The Dead Letter Office I had a clear idea of what the art installation aspect of their project was going to be, but I wasn’t sure how they were going to bring these letters to the stage in a theatrical way. It ended up working very well! O’Brien inhabits the character of a postal office worker and a pre-selected audience member comes onstage to be interviewed about a person who they have either lost or lost contact with. They are then given a letter they have never seen before to read aloud, and they, along with the audience, are invited to draw connections between the content of the letter and the story that the audience member has shared about their lost person. Last night Leesa Hamilton was selected as the audience member, and the audience was immediately riveted in watching her interaction with O’Brien evolve organically onstage. It felt at once very theatrical, but also entirely spontaneous, reminding me kind of what Rebecca Northan’s Blind Date must be like.
We were then transported to New Waterford in 1987 for a staged reading of Richie Wilcox’s new play Coal Bowl Queen. Since this is a staged reading, I will hold off writing a full review until there is a fully staged production, but, I was really enthralled listening to this play, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing its next public iteration.
Richie Wilcox is from New Waterford, the real-life home of Coal Bowl, a magical boys’ High School Basketball Tournament that has been igniting the Cape Breton former mining town of New Waterford into a Winter Wonderland since 1982. Wilcox vividly paints a caring portrait of the town (both past and present), and really gives the audience a clear picture of what makes this event there so special. It is such a unique backdrop for a play, and it roots this particular story firmly in this time and this place.
The play is a mixture of verbatim theatre, taken from over fifty interviews that Wilcox conducted with those who have had various experiences with Coal Bowl over forty years, and Wilcox’s own imagined story within this framework. While the two are mixed together, most of the monologues seem to have an extra layer of vocal specificity to them that really provides a sense of depth and scope for the town around the main characters.
The story is centred on Roz who comes to New Waterford for the first time on a quest to find their birth mother. They befriend a local post office worker and find out that their mother is Queenie Chisholm, the 1987 Coal Bowl Queen, but that she has been shrouded in mystery almost ever since. Together Roz and Tanya begin to talk to everyone in the town remotely connected with Coal Bowl 1987 in the hopes of solving the mystery. Along the way, Roz encounters disparate opinions about Coal Bowl, and its legacy, and even its role in New Waterford today, and they have their own strong opinions about certain elements of the tournament as well. Wilcox does a beautiful job at presenting these various perspectives in ways that don’t feel forced or didactic, and also in ways that invite the audience to empathize with each of the different sides of the argument.
I especially loved seeing Karen Bassett onstage, playing a myriad of different characters, but especially as Corinne, a heartbreaking, very multifaceted woman with a very stubborn streak who clashes with Roz, but also refuses to allow someone from a larger province diminish her or her opinions. Ursula Calder is mesmerizing to watch, as she always is, playing Queenie, a mysterious young woman, who makes a series of strange choices after Coal Bowl 1987, which I found I accepted because of the way Calder’s eyes shine, and how much she manages to say when she doesn’t even have any lines. Henricus Gielis came aboard the project at the last minute and absolutely nailed his performance of the hometown former Coal Bowl hero.
There is a form on the Heist website where folks who were at the reading can leave feedback for Wilcox to use as he continues to develop this script. There is so much in the play already that is heartwarming and funny, suspenseful, and strange. This piece feels very much like a play Nova Scotians need: an artistic celebration of something that is truly fascinating and 100% New Waterford.
You can watch EcoFuturist Dispatches by For Ensemble Collective here. It seems to be in a very early stage, and the zoom performance is interesting because the playwright allows the actors who have read the scenes to give feedback, which then becomes for us a kind of continuation of the performance. I was interested in the world that was being created by seeley quest here, like The Last Show On Earth ™️, which is playing now at the Scotiabank Studio Theatre in Halifax, this story takes place in an immediate future, where the realities of climate change have caught up to us in truly life-changing ways. We are able to see a future where humans have continued to open up the binaries in relationship and identity, and also in community. I think this play, even just in a snippet, or maybe especially just in a snippet, would be easier to see staged visually, as there are a lot of stage directions that seem essential for orientating us. It’s exciting to have the opportunity to literally peer into this zoom window and catch a glimpse of some of the work that artists in other provinces are doing, and to realize that they also are interested in a lot of the same themes as the artists here.
Overall, congratulations to Kathryn McCormack and everyone at Eastern Front Theatre for a really exciting Early Stages Festival. I’m sure I’m not the only one looking forward to Stages, where we will see even more works at even more disparate stages of development in May!
