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Reviews & Recaps from the Women's Play Festival

Audiences Show-up for Showdown

9/26/2024

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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!
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    About Susan Bonnell 

    Susan Bonnell is Vice-President of Theatre CBS and an active community theatre performer and director in the St. John's area.

    Recently, she wrote and directed Duckish, an adaptation of Tom Dawe's ghost and fairy stories for Theatre CBS. In 2023, she was awarded Best Actress at the Provincial Drama Festival for her portrayal of Annie in Calendar Girls (St. John's Player's). This winter, she is directing A Christmas Story for TCBS. Susan is the Director of Public Engagement and External Relations for NL Health Services.

    She is proud to have been a small part of the herstory for Persistence and is looking forward to sharing her reflections on the Year of the Arts Women’s Play Festival.

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St. John’s is home to a rich, diverse, and vibrant urban Indigenous community. Located on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Beothuk, the lands and waters in and around the City have traditionally served as a gathering place for the Mi’kmaq. The broader region of Newfoundland and Labrador continues to be home to diverse Indigenous Peoples, including First Nations, Inuit, and Métis. We honour and pay respect to the past, present, and future caretakers of these territories.

We also must acknowledge the labour theft extracted from people of African descent, used to build European wealth and economies globally, and in the Canadian nation state, including Newfoundland and Labrador’s shipbuilding and cod fishery industries, through the violence of trans-Atlantic enslavement.

We thank both First Light and the office of the Vice-Provost of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism at Memorial University for crafting and sharing these words that provide us with important perspectives.

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  • Home
  • Opportunities
  • Raise Her Up - The Gosling Statue
    • Statue Supporters
    • Armine Nutting Gosling Statue project updates
    • Purchase Statue Miniature
    • Project Newsletter Apr 2024
    • Donate to #RaiseHerUp
  • The Nest
  • About Us
    • About
    • Staff & Governance >
      • Board Bios
    • In The News
  • Donate
    • Join the Ceiling Breakers Circle
    • Donate to PerSIStence
    • Persistence Supporters
  • Past Projects
    • 2017-2018 >
      • Isle of Demons (Sept 2017)
      • Pink Tie Gala (2017)
      • Offensive to Some (Dec 2017)
      • Women Playing Hamlet (Feb 2018)
      • Isle of Demons (April 2018)
      • Play Workshops
    • 2018-2019 >
      • Pink Tie Gala (2018)
      • Original (Nov 2018)
      • Offensive to Some (Jan 2019)
    • 2019-2020 >
      • The Abortion Monologues (2019)
      • Pink Tie Gala (2019)
      • The Haunting of Margaret Duley >
        • Teacher's Guide
        • Workshops with Edward Daranyi
      • Working with Respect Conference
    • 2020-2021 >
      • Original (2021) >
        • Programme
      • Offensive to Some (2021) >
        • Programme
      • What Hangs in the Balance (2021)
      • I AM A GENIUS DOES ANYONE HERE KNOW ME? (2021)
    • 2021-2022 >
      • Votes for Women 100
      • Pink Tie Gala (2021)
    • 2022-2023 >
      • The Abortion Monologues (2022)
      • 2022 Pink Tie Gala
    • 2023-2024 >
      • Stolen Sisters
      • Rainbow Tie Gala
      • Precariously Placed: Pandemic Monologues from the Edge
    • 2024-2025 >
      • Today I...
      • Year of the Arts Women's Play Festival >
        • Reviews & Recaps
        • Opening Night
        • Night Two
        • Night Three
        • Night Four
        • Night Five
        • Night Six
        • Night Seven
        • Night Eight
        • Night Nine
        • Night Ten
        • Night Eleven
        • Closing Night
      • Goodbye Glass Ceiling - An Election Night Celebration
      • 8th Annual Pink Tie Gala >
        • Pink Tie Gala Programme
  • Blog
  • Contact & Location