PREVIEW
From Cradle to Stage: An Evening of New Works
May 14 to 19
Walterdale Theatre
10322 – 83 Ave.
Tickets: $20 adults, $18 seniors, $15 Walterdale members. Call 780-420-1757 or visit www.tixonthesquare.ca
Every year Walterdale Theatre packs its season with a combination of classic, and new or experimental plays that for various reasons professional companies pass on.
From Cradle to Stage: An Evening of New Works is the community theatre’s annual salute to developing playwrights.
Following a submission process, playwrights are selected to work with dramaturges to further polish the script.
This year From Cradle to Stage mounts a single play, Kristen M. Finlay’s Water Beneath Her Feet from May 14 to 19.
Finlay wrote the play after a family member was diagnosed with mental illness. At around that same time, a friend posted photos of a flooded rural Manitoba road.
“I was struck by the uncertainty of the road ahead in both circumstances,” Finlay wrote.
In Water Beneath Her Feet Janey (Brittany Hinse) contemplates marriage and children. But mysteries surrounding her mother’s mental illness prevent Janey from moving forward.
When she was nine years old, Janey’s parents moved close to a treatment centre to help her mother deal with mental illness. But one night they disappeared.
Janey was raised by her grandmother and has vague memories of a quirky, spirited mother, Lizzie (Wylee Johnston), and a more down-to-earth father, Clay (Matt Boisvert).
“She hears rain in her head no matter where she goes. She can’t think straight. Rain triggers memories of the last day she saw her parents and it was during a horrific storm,” said St. Albert director Sheldan Ishaq (How the Other Half Lives).
After finding a box of mementos in grandma’s house, Janey returns to her parents’ old dwelling and meets Wilf (Dale Wilson), an old gas station owner who just may hold some clues to her parents' mysterious disappearance.
Although water and rain are strong motifs in the play, Ishaq believes family is an equally important theme.
“I wanted to make sure that when a person is struggling with mental illness, they are still part of the family. Mental illness is only a part of the person. It doesn’t consume you.”
Boisvert, also from St. Albert, was struck by the play’s multiple layers and how a childhood memory can change as years of experience shifts perspective.
“As a child you see things in a specific way, but as an adult with years of experience, you see the memory in a different way. You have a different outlook on life and you see the memory in a different way,” Boisvert said.
Ishaq added, “With all the memories in the play, some are sad. But it does leave you with hope for Janey’s future.”
Brayden O’Boyle’s David, Lies, Liza was a second play also slated to run as part of Cradle to Stage. However, it pulled out. Five surprise staged readings of infant scripts, a different one each evening, will preview in its place.
