Tragicomedy about attempt to reclaim property in Estonia debuts at Bus Stop
Most people in February would rather be home in their pyjamas but not Mary Vingoe.
She is working hard in a small rehearsal space with five actors on a fully-designed production of Home, a world premiere running briefly in one of Halifax’s smallest theatres.
"There is a tremendous group of people in Halifax in the independent theatre community who are doing great work and I want to be part of it," says Vingoe. "Nobody has enough money, there’s no space but there are incredible things happening."
Vingoe deeply believes in Home.
"I really love doing plays that have something to say."
Written by Governor General award-winning dramatist Colleen Wagner, this play is about an elderly Canadian man, originally from Estonia, and his Canadian-born son who travel back to Estonia to reclaim the family home, seized by the Russians during the 1940s. Living in the house, though, are three generations of Russian women who call it their home.
The fight is on.
"I like Colleen’s work," says Vingoe, who first met Wagner when she worked as co-founder of Nightwood Theatre in Toronto in the 1980s.
"I like the fact she writes about larger world issues, political issues. She takes on moral dilemmas which combine the individual with the social and the political and that’s not common with Canadian playwriting. It tends to be focused on individual stories.
"This one I love, it’s very personal, there’s a lot of humour in it. Basically, it deals with the notion that we are all German and we are all Jews. We all contain within us the ability to be the oppressor and the oppressed."
For actor John Beale, Home is about coming to terms with the past. His character, the Canadian-born son Wendall, has no interest in the past and butts heads with the young, Estonian-born, Russian daughter, Sonya.
"It’s interesting," says Beale, known locally for his one-man clown show, The Peggy Show.
His character doesn’t have an attachment to anything.
"For Wendall, it’s about recognizing the value of what happened and starting to see things and his father in a different light and recognizing the past is part of us but you can’t get stuck there," he says.
"You can’t cut it off," says Vingoe, "and you can’t get stuck there. If there’s a message, that’s it."
Sarah English, a Dalhousie theatre graduate moving to Toronto in March, plays Sonya, who has taught herself how to speak English from the Internet.
The actor got to work on her Russian-accented English, a slang deeply influenced by hip hop, with Wagner, who came to Halifax during rehearsals.
"I could say, ‘What does this word mean?’ and it’s an invented language. If I don’t understand it, no one’s going to have a chance at it," she says.
"My character is this hybrid, she wants to be American in many ways and to make her alien she has some break dancing and so I worked with a break dance crew in Halifax and came up with some moves — popping and boogaloo."
English and Beale’s characters represent the idea of moving forward, away from wartime history.
"It’s an extraordinary story," says Vingoe. "The Estonians were absolutely massacred during the war and sent to Siberia and many, many left and for 50 years it was occupied by the Soviets and with the Singing Revolution and the fall of the iron curtain they got their country back. This is 1995. The Russians who were at the top of the heap are on the bottom. They were given the house and now the Estonians have given it back to the Canadians.
"What makes a home? Is it ownership? Is it being there? Is it memories? The place is filled with boxes. The older Russian woman, played by Mary-Colin Chisholm, has kept the Estonian artifacts that were there. She dresses up in them and imagines herself a great lady and it’s a battle of memories that goes on. Both of the older people have many, many memories attached to these old, mouldy things.
"The house becomes divided and the battle line is drawn down the middle. It’s like the time of occupation in miniature."
Vingoe finds it exciting to bring new plays to life.
"It’s something I got addicted to long ago," says the co-founder of Ship’s Company Theatre and Eastern Front Theatre.
"John and I did Sisters 20 years ago at Ship’s Company Theatre — Wendy Lill’s Sisters — which has gone on to many productions."
Home has been workshopped twice.
"So many plays live in a developmental gulag," says Vingoe. "We thought this should happen so we applied for funding and got to a point where we could do a modest production."
The production may be modest but the talent is not with a full slate of professional designers and actors.
"We have an incredible team all down there at the Bus Stop," says Vingoe.
ELISSA BARNARD
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