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Reviews & Recaps from the Women's Play Festival

In a word, “Epic.”

9/24/2024

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That’s how I would describe Sharon King-Campbell’s Factory Girls, presented as a dramatic reading on Night Seven of the Year of the Arts Women’s Play Festival.

Ten actors took to the stage to play a score of characters, but primarily ten women who went to work in a munitions factory in Toronto during World War I. The characters range in age from a 71-year-old mother to a 16-year-old farm girl; leisure to working class.

Reading director Jeannette Lambermont-Morey did a fine job of giving a glimpse into what a full staging of this play might include, from the sounds of the factory floor cleverly created using simple props to minimal but dramatic movement. I thought the clicking of knitting needles at all the meetings, done using a mouth effect, was clever.

This play would be a large one to produce, with a sizable cast, large set, period costumes and special effects (such as shredded paper “falling from the sky and being cleared like piles of snow.”

Sharon originally wrote Factory Girls as her MA thesis, which she admits she wrote with ten actors “because I didn't have to have a plan to produce it myself.” Funny what dreaming big can accomplish. This is a well conceived historical drama that any actress would kill to be part of. It was very entertaining and, if staged, would be an enjoyable night at the theatre. I liked that this show drives home a lot of important information about women’s lives and women’s conditions in the early 1900s without hammering you over the head with it.

There were a lot of familiar and some new faces on the stage, and strong performances from all. I especially enjoyed Alexis Koetting’s Beulah Johnston; the relationship between Edie St-Croix (Melissa Williams) and Jane Baker (Alison Clarke); and the mother-daughter banter between Beatrice Maloney (Jillian Rees-Brown) and Ellen Maloney (Bridget Wareham). Willow Kean played Mary; Willa Small played Abigail Garner; Robyn Vivian was Ann Jones; and Kiersten Noel played Laura McAlister. Alison Woolridge did a stellar job embodying two diverse characters – the mousey Sophia, an Austrian immigrant; and the bombastic and repugnant Davis, the play’s only male character.

Night Eight includes With Apologies to Nancy Benoit, a play written and performed by Venus Argento Barrington, and Goldstar Girlfriend, written and performed by Susan Kelsey.

See you at 7 p.m.!

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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