HIGH SCHOOL MATINEE
STUDY GUIDE
October 10 - 28, 2012
A world premiere
Director: Robert Metcalfe
Set & Costume Designer: Brian Perchaluk
Lighting Designer: Scott Henderson
Original Music and Sound Design by Don Benedictson
Stage Manager: Karyn Kumhyr
Assistant Stage Manager: Kathryn Ball
Featuring:
Evan Hall
Terry, Guy
Megan McArton
Lillian
Jan Skene
Shirley
Steven Ratzlaff
Jim
RobYn Slade
Pat
THERE WILL BE ONE INTERMISSION.
High School Matinee Series supported by
Prairie Theatre Exchange is a not-for-profit theatre and an active member of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres
(PACT), and engages, under the terms of the Canadian Theatre Agreement, professional artists who are members of the
Canadian Actors’ Equity Association.
Prairie Theatre Exchange gratefully acknowledges the generous support of:
The Manitoba Arts Council, The Canada Council, The City of Winnipeg, The Winnipeg Foundation, The Prairie Theatre
Exchange Foundation Trust.
Characters
Jim Sullivan, owner of Chippawa Box and Paper
Shirley Sullivan, Jim’s twin sister
Pat Sullivan, Shirley’s daughter
Terry, American draft dodger
Guy, Jim’s POW mate
Lillian, Shirley & Jim’s late mother
Setting
Chippawa, Ontario (two kilometers upstream from Niagara Falls)
Play Synopsis
The Sullivan twins, Jim and Shirley, and her daughter Pat run the Chippawa Box and
Paper printing company, originally purchased by the twins’ mother Lillian, who appears
in the play as a memory of Shirley.
Jim, a former Olympic hopeful, struggles to deal with his memories of detention as a
POW in WWll Japan.
Shirley, a former town beauty, blames everyone around her for the life she is living and
dreams of retiring to Florida.
Pat tries to accept her lot in life as the “unattractive” daughter of the town beauty, the
niece of the almost-Olympic athlete, and the granddaughter of the woman who went
over Niagara Falls in a wooden barrel. She’s pretty much put her life on hold in order to
help run the family print shop, never daring to make the same kind of leaps that all the
other members of her family have undertaken at some point in their lives.
Together they try to hold the small printing business together.
In a spurt of initiative, Pat procures a big printing contract from the city of Niagara Falls.
The family has six weeks to fulfill the contract using old and unreliable equipment, with
the help of an American draft dodger named Terry, and, oh yeah, the first man is about
to land on the moon.
Should make for an exciting six weeks in the summer of ’69.
Style: Naturalism with flashbacks
Time: Six weeks in the summer of 1969
Themes: Family issues of choice, responsibility, and blame.
Warnings: Some strong language
Play Etiquette
When young people attend a live theatrical performance for the first time, they often
come into the theatre without understanding how different it is from watching TV or a
movie – that as well as the audience can hear the performers, the performers can hear
the audience!
Please remind your students that:
•
They must be on time for the play start. Once it has started, latecomers will not
be admitted.
•
The actors would appreciate a quiet audience – that means no talking, eating or
drinking, which is distracting not only for the actors, but also for the rest of the
audience members in a small theatre like PTE.
•
Cell phones must be turned off – even if the ringer is silent, the light from phone
screens during texting and other functions is really disruptive and distracting.
Imagine waving a flashlight around in a darkened room!
•
They need to remain in their seats once the play has started – movement is very
distracting for everyone else in the theatre. There will be an intermission when
they can use the washroom.
•
Students should not leave the lobby during intermission. If they miss the start of
the second act, they will not be admitted. If someone leaves during the show,
they will not be able to get back into the theatre.
Active Viewing
To make the most out of watching this live performance, please encourage your
students to not only watch the play for the story, but to also pay attention to the set,
costumes, music and lighting. These aspects are an important part of a live
performance and will enhance later discussions about the play and the students’
experience watching it.
After the Show
The actors invite the student audience to remain seated – they will come back onto the
stage to answer questions about the play, and about acting in general.
A Message from the Playwright
There really is a Chippawa, and when I grew up there the Town Square had a bakery
and a pool hall and a drugstore with a funny name. The bakery is gone now and the
drugstore was bought by a chain, but there is still a Riverside Hotel. It's true that
humans first landed on the moon in the summer of 1969, the same summer they shut
off the American Falls for a time. There really was a Battle of Hong Kong, too. But
nobody should use this play as a history text. The first person to go over the Falls in a
barrel was Annie Edson Taylor and little is known for sure about her. But as they say:
"never spoil a good story for the sake of the truth." I have created a fictional woman in
her stead which allowed me more liberty, but I do want to thank Ms. Taylor for the
inspiration.
Ever since I saw a Junior High production of The Mikado when I was six, in Chippawa,
theatre has been the main thing I wanted to do. I've been lucky enough to act in plays
(highlights include Marion Bridge at PTE, Over The Tavern at MTC and Baloney! at
MTYP) and write my own plays (The Eight Tiny Reindeer of the Apocalypse at Theatre
Projects, The Blanket Show and Binky and Boo at the Fringe). And I try to help other
people write their own plays at the Manitoba Association of Playwrights.
My thanks are due to the following: To the Playwrights Unit and the actors who have
workshopped it over the years. To the Hong Kong Veterans and George Peterson who
told me his own story. To my friends and family, to the cast, crew and PTE staff. To
Bruce McManus, who paid me two bucks to finish the first draft and has never stopped
helping since. To Bob Metcalfe for nailing the lid onto the barrel. And most of all to Rob,
Carly and Griffin for the love and the time.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Niagara Falls – Queen of the Mist
On October 24, 1901, Annie Taylor was the first person to
go over Niagara Falls. She was a 63 year old school
teacher from Michigan who thought she would gain fame
and fortune from her daredevil deed.
Unfortunately, after Taylor accomplished the feat, her
manager ran off with the barrel and sold pictures of pretty
girls posing next to the barrel that went over the Falls.
Annie Taylor tried to sell autographed pictures to Niagara
Falls tourists, but in the end she died famous but
destitute.
Note: In the play, Annie Taylor is fictionalized as Lillian
Sullivan, who went over the falls in 1910.
10 years later, Bobby Leach successfully made it over the Falls and toured the world on
the strength of his endeavor, gaining the fame and fortune that had eluded Taylor.
However, Leach’s luck ran out in New Zealand. He slipped on an orange rind, broke his
leg, got gangrene and died.
Read more about Annie Taylor at:
http://www.reservationsystems.com/niagara_daredevils/annie_taylor.html
Life for Canadian POWs in Japanese Camps
In 1941, the Canadian government sent 1,975 Canadian troops to defend Hong Kong in
response to British requests. British intelligence under-estimated the number of
Japanese troops and their fighting experience. The battle of Hong Kong was short,
intense and tragic as it began on December 8, 1941 and ended on Christmas Day with
Hong Kong surrendering to Japan. Isogai Rensuke became the first Japanese governor
of Hong Kong, and lead to three years and eight months of Imperial Japanese
administration. Out of the 1,975 Canadian troops sent to Hong Kong, about 300 died in
the battle and almost as many died afterwards in Japanese Sham Shui Po and North
Point POW camps in Hong Kong.
The Japanese captors were rough from the start. They tied prisoners’ hands together
using barbed wires, and bayoneted anyone too weak to walk from their wounds. The
camps were overcrowded and unsanitary. The huts they inhabited were rat infested,
dark, with no heat. Donald Geraghty of the Royal Rifles of Canada described the
barracks of Sham Shui Po as the “filthiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. No wonder the
English are dying.” Food and disease became main threats to survival in the POW
camps. Food rations were meagre – often only a small bowl of rice. The prisoners were
forced to sleep on wooden planks or a cement floor. Given their already weakened
conditions, the Japanese put the POWs to hard work and the lack of food and poor
nutrition added to their risk of disease. Such inhumane living conditions resulted in
diseases such as diphtheria, pellagra, malaria, wet beri beri, dry beri beri and dysentery.
Medicine was seldom available to treat the POWs who contracted these diseases,
although sporadic supplies arrived courtesy of the International Red Cross. As a result, the
POW camps were a living hell and the casualty rate was high. In total, 554 soldiers of the
1,975 soldiers who originally sailed to Hong Kong were either buried or cremated in the Far
East. The ones that survived the camps typically lost almost half of their body weight.
The issue of compensation for these prisoners has never been resolved. The brutality
meted out by the Japanese to Allied prisoners of war was such that even more than half
a century after the war, many, although certainly not all, ex-POWs express a deep
hatred and an almost complete unwillingness to forgive the Japanese. This bitterness is
in good part due to the lack of public contrition or even recognition by the Japanese
government and public for the grievous treatment inflicted on our prisoners. But exPOWs of all Allied countries are also bitter about the failure of their own governments to
pursue aggressively the Japanese government for compensation and formal
acknowledgement for the subhuman treatment inflicted on their soldiers. The ex-POWs feel
betrayed by their own governments, which they see cynically putting trade and commerce
before the interests of servicemen who suffered severely at the hands of the Japanese.
From:
http://www.torontoalpha.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=69&Itemid=123
Moon Walk
With one small step off a ladder, Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on
the moon on July 20, 1969, before the eyes of hundreds of millions of awed television
viewers worldwide. With that step, he placed mankind's first footprint on an
extraterrestrial world and gained instant hero status.
His first words upon stepping on the lunar surface have since been etched in history:
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."
An estimated 500 million people watched the grainy black and white broadcast that
showed Armstrong, clad in a white space suit, climb down the lunar lander's ladder onto
the moon's desolate surface.
http://www.canada.com/life/Neil+Armstrong+First+moon/1792959/story.html
"It was simply a night of magic. Inside the CBC Television studio, I was anchoring the
network coverage of the most dramatic moment in the space age -- the first human
being to walk on the moon. It was the biggest audience CBC news had ever had.
Canadians, along with 600 million people around the world, were watching transfixed as
Neil Armstrong set foot on a kind of thin sand on the moon." -- CBC anchor Knowlton
Nash http://www.cbc.ca/archives
Draft Dodgers
No one expected the Vietnam
War to play out as it did. With
thousands of young men
fighting to the death overseas,
another group of American
sons fled their homeland and
journeyed north to Canada. As
the battle raged on and the
antiwar movement divided the
United States, draft dodgers
and deserters struggled to
forge new lives for themselves. Seeking sanctuary and the opportunity to make a
difference, they changed their adopted country unquestionably. (Note: Some clips
contain explicit language.)
http://www.cbc.ca/archives/categories/war-conflict/vietnam-war/seeking-sanctuary-draftdodgers/warm-welcome.html
1940 Olympic Games
The 1940 Summer Olympic Games were to be held in Tokyo Japan, from September 21
to October 6, 1940. They were cancelled because of the outbreak of World War ll. The
Olympic Games were suspended for the duration of the War and did not resume until
the London Games of 1948.
Pole Vaulting
Before the mid-50s, pole vaulters used poles made of bamboo. Because bamboo is
more unyielding, the greatest height achieved by a pole vaulter in 1940 was 15 feet, by
Cornelius Warmerdam. Since the invention of fibreglass, athletes have vaulted over the
20 feet mark.
To see pole vaulting from the 40s: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIKsHpRoO2M
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/15/sports/dutch-warmerdam-pole-vaulter-dies-at-86.html
BEFORE THE PLAY
Discussion
1. What does it mean to be on the brink? Do you ever feel that way? How do you deal
with those feelings?
2. Is it better to look before you leap or leap before your change your mind? Which
philosophy do you think guides your life right now? Do you think it is always the best
philosophy to follow? Why?
3. What do you think life was like in a small Canadian town in 1969?
4. Many students attend the same school where older siblings made a name for
themselves as athletic stars or academic champions. What sort of expectations do
teachers or fellow students have for the younger siblings? Is it difficult to cope with
these expectations?
Activities
Have You Ever?
One of the objectives of this drama exercise is to help students to think about all of the
things that a person can do as compared to things that they choose to do.
•
Students sit in a circle. Everyone has a chair except the person who is IT,
standing in the center.
•
The person in the middle asks a "Have You Ever" question that is true for him/her
self e.g., "have you ever climbed a mountain?"
•
Anyone who answers "yes" gets up and moves to an empty seat. So, if four
people get up they try to exchange seats as quickly as possible. The person who
asked the question tries to quickly gain a seat, leaving one other person without
a seat and they become the new IT.
•
In choosing a question, students can ask questions which reveal something
about themselves or their classmates e.g., “Have you ever run in a marathon?”
or ask simple questions like, “Have you ever fallen off of a bicycle?” for which
nearly everyone would get up.
Note: If you have students who like to push boundaries, then you should introduce
this game by reminding the class about the “time and place” rule. This exercise is
not an excuse to discuss subject matter that would normally not be appropriate in
the classroom.
Tuned In
Divide the group into two teams. Team A chooses a specific television program to
watch together. All members of Team A proceed to view the chosen program – without
verbalizing. Team B observes them from the audience area. After several minutes, ask
the teams to reverse roles. Upon completion of the first round, ask the teams to identify
the television program that they were watching. Then have an open discussion about
what they observed from the audience, and also what they felt as a spectator being
viewed by an audience.
This is an exercise designed for getting the people on stage to work individually within a
group setting. It also challenges the students in the audience to closely observe how
meaning is communicated without words from the stage.
On the Brink of…
Assemble the group together and pick two players out at random. While the rest of the
group observes, the two players improvise an extended scene based on one of the
following situations:
1. Two people share an apartment. One tenant wants to give the place a thorough
cleaning while the other just wants to leave things as they are until Spring.
2. Two people are hanging a picture together. One person wants to hang it up in
the living room for everyone to see. The other person really wants to put it away
in the garage where no one will ever see it. The picture was given to the first
person as a very special gift.
3. Two strangers are sitting beside each other on a plane. One person is very tired
and desperately needs to sleep. The other person, who is terribly afraid of flying,
tries to stay calm by engaging in lively conversations with the other passenger.
4. Two people find a bag containing several thousands of dollars in cash. One
person feels that the only right thing to do is call the police without delay. The
other person can only think of thousands of particular reasons of why the two
should keep the cash.
5. Two people are lost in the forest. One person wants to follow fresh bear tracks in
hope of getting back to civilization. The other person is determined that the two
should stay where they are until morning (even though the wolf pack in the
distance seems to be getting closer).
6. Two people are dining at a very expensive restaurant. Each diner is out to
impress the other and insists upon paying for both meals. When the check
arrives, they soon realize that they do not have enough money to pay for their
own meal, let alone trying to pay for the other person.
7. Two people, who are extremely fond of each other, are about to sit down to a
romantic candlelight dinner. The person who has worked all day in the kitchen is
eager to impress the dinner guest with seven specially prepared dishes – each
one containing some form of red meat. The dinner guest is a vegetarian.
8. Two artists are painting a mural together. One artist demands that only down
strokes be employed as they paint. The other artist insists that they both use
cross strokes.
9. Two people meet at a party. One person is determined to set up a romantic date
with the other. The other person only goes out to places with his or her mother.
After all the players have had an opportunity to try one of the situations given above,
have them develop their own scenario. Each situation should incorporate conflict,
action and dialogue.
AFTER THE PLAY
Discussion
The playwright has made reference to several dates throughout the play.
Research the significance of the following dates, and then explain their relevance to the
action in the play.
May 30, 1969
(end of the month when bills are due)
July 8, 1969
(U.S. withdrawal from Viet Nam begins)
July 16, 1969
(Launch of Apollo 11)
July 19, 1969
(Apollo 11 goes into orbit)
July 20, 1969
(Apollo 11 lands on the moon)
1. Many of the characters in The Brink are on the cusp of making important decisions
about their lives. What choices do they face?
2. How do the characters in the play feel about Americans? Why do you think they
have those perceptions?
3. There are many moments during the play when characters are on the verge of doing
something and then back out. What are some of those moments? Why do you think
the characters choose inaction over action?
4. At certain points during the play, characters in The Brink feel like they have run out
of options. Do you think this is true for yourself or do you feel like you always a
choice?
5. It’s said that “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” How does that relate to The
Brink?
6. Jim thinks that the greatest human achievement is forgiveness. Who does he have
to forgive? Who does he need to forgive him? What do you think is the greatest
human achievement?
7. Late in the play Pat makes reference to people “flying around the moon”, and then
adds “I kind of wish they’d left it alone.” Why does Pat feel that way?
Activities
Debate: Duty vs. personal freedom and happiness.
Ask the students to debate whether Pat made the right choice at the end. Is it her duty
to care for her family? Should she get to run off and have a good time or should she
have stayed to take care of them, even though it meant being miserable? Is it Shirley
and Jim's duty to set her free?
Should Have Said
Throughout The Brink, characters choose inaction over action, or hiding instead of
revealing feelings. These drama exercises give students the opportunity to change the
story and explore the results.
Either use scenes from The Brink, or episodes from students’ lives to work this game.
Version 1
Ask students to think of different points in the play when they feel that the characters
said the wrong thing or made the wrong action. Brainstorm as a class. Then ask
each student to write a scene or short story with their revised version of events.
Version 2
Play this version of the exercise if students already have experience in
improvisation.
Number of players: 2 and 1 coach
Description: Two players will play a scene based on an audience suggestion. At any
time during the scene the coach can clap his/her hands. When the coach claps, the
player who delivered the last line must go back and say what they "should have
said." For example, if player A says, "I just got bit by a dog!" (CLAP) "a snake!"
(CLAP) "an old woman with false teeth!" If the coach does not clap then the scene
continues. The scene ends when there is a "tag line" and "scene" is called.
Note: If you are the coach, don't get "clap" happy. If you clap after every other word,
the players will not have a chance to let the scene develop.
The Printer’s Hat
It might seem a little childish but it is fun to make printer’s hats. Although the other
characters mock Jim for his hat, it was a uniform of sorts traditionally worn by craft
tradesmen such as carpenters, masons, painters, and printers.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEnYmWVTJ4Y