Audiences Show-up for Showdown

Night Nine at the Year of the Arts Women’s play festival featured Showdown, written and directed by Michelle Clemens. The play examines the NAPE strike of 1986 through the lens of Joan, a union leader who struggles to balance work and home during a tumultuous time.

In introducing the play, Michelle said: “I was an adolescent in the 1980s, and the feminist movement felt like it was flagging. Women were denied mortgages and loans because of their gender, equal pay was still a dream for most women, and husbands had ownership rights to their wives bodies. Men were not expected to help at home. It as a time of hardship in Newfoundland and Labrador, when young graduates fled the province in droves… Strikes were frequent in that adversarial environment.”

At the root of problems was Bill C-59, which limited the right for workers to strike.

To her coworkers and her family, Joan appears to be an unapologetic hard-liner. But like all things, perception is never reality. As the play progresses, we get to learn Joan’s backstory through flashbacks to her childhood in a Catholic orphanage; Joan is essentially a border in the orphanage, deposited there and paid for by her father.

Showdown won the 2023 Arts and Letters competition for dramatic script and it’s no wonder. This is a strong play that demands staging. At times, the reading felt a little didactic, especially as key points in the strike were recounted by the Radio Announcer, but this could be easily addressed and eliminated once the show hits the stage.

There were many strong performances last night, led by Jill Kennedy as Joan. For the 90-minute show, Jill was only absent from a few scenes, deftly switching from union leader, to wife, to mom to child. I was particularly impressed by the multi-dimensional union team Michelle created, each with their own backstories, especially the sensitive Ernie (read by Peter Jones); and the aggressive and funny Jerry (Chad Furlong). Anastacia Hopkins did I nice job of doubling as Lucy, a union worker, and Sister Mary, head of the orphanage in Joan’s flashbacks. The scenes with Joan’s family, represented by husband Robert (Leo Converse) and daughter Donna (Claire Montrose), really amplified the absurdity of a woman fighting for work equality, while struggling to step outside a traditional role at home. Janet O’Reilly (as Radio Announcer and Bank Manager), Jody Rideout (as Mr. Petten and Mr. White) and Courtney Szabo reading stage directions rounded out this strong cast.

There was a large, appreciative audience on Wednesday night for this show, including many NAPE leaders and members. As I was leaving the theatre, I heard lots of positive buzz for this dramatic reading, which bodes well for future staging.

Night Ten features a new play from one of my favourite writers, Trudy Morgan-Cole: Is This the Hill You Wish You’d Died On? The reading is directed by Sharon King-Campbell (Night Seven, Factory Girls). See you there!