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Reviews & Recaps from the Women's Play Festival

"Is This the Hill You Wish You’d Died On?” Review & Recap

9/27/2024

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Night Ten at the Year of the Arts Women’s Play Festival featured a stage reading of Trudy Morgan-Cole’s latest play, “Is This the Hill You Wish You’d Died On?”

You may be most familiar with Trudy’s novels – The Rivers of Brooklyn, That Forgetful Shore, the Cupids Trilogy and my personal favorite A Sudden Sun, plus many more. Trudy made her first foray into playwrighting with The Mirror, which PerSIStence Theatre will be remounting in 2025.

I really enjoyed this show, especially since director Sharon King-Campbell went the extra step to include some staging along with the reading; it gave the audience a taste of what a fully formed show might look like. Kudos to Emma Cole for the simple but effective costuming.

On the surface, this play is about a modern young woman, Taylorbeth, who is visited by the ghosts of her ancestors (and a ghost from her more recent past) in the General Protestant Cemetery on Waterford Bridge Road. A central theme in this play is religion, but I think all the talk of faith and denominational differences sometimes overshadows the true core of this story, which in my opinion is storytelling itself and the myths we create to neatly box up the past.

In introducing her work in development, Trudy explained: “I think constantly about what it would be like to meet the women of the past that I write about, including the women in my own family history – how we would get along, what we might agree on and disagree on – and that wondering is what this play grows out of.” 

It’s such an interesting idea. All of us lucky enough to have been raised, like Trudy, on a rich traditional of family storytelling, have these pictures and impressions in our minds of relatives dead long before we were born, based on commonly retold stories. But, as the characters so deftly demonstrate, nothing is every so black and white, romanticised or simple in real life as it is when we create a good story about it. People are complex. 

Taylorbeth has such a firm perspective on who her Great-Great-Great-Great - (did I miss a great?!) - Grandmother is that, when she gets the opportunity to meet her ghost, talk to her and ask her questions, she struggles with accepting Theresa’s real story. And not only does she struggle with accepting the truths, she also argues with her ancestors that they are wrong about why they made the decisions they made. At one point, Jean asks Taylorbeth what she’s so mad about, anyway, and we learn the real reason for this ghostly encounter. I’ll say no more. We will see this show on a stage for sure!

Gabrielle Therrien as Taylorbeth and Allison Woolridge as Theresa were stellar, as were the other actresses: Jean Graham as Lizzie; Melissa Ralph as Jean; Nicole Redmond as Isabelle; Christine Hennebury as Gail; and Mandy Armstrong Singer as Danielle. 

Night Eleven features Iphis Is a Man, written and directed by Cheney Emberg. Only two nights left – see you at the show!

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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