Sunday, February 4 was the final performance for The Graduate
Centre for Study of Drama’s presentation of “Not Just
Trifles: An Evening of Two One-Act Plays.” Both plays presented
female perspectives on the early life of European settlers on the North
American prairies.
The first performance, Still Stands the House, written by Gwen Pharis
Ringwood and directed by Lydia Wilkinson, depicted the common
loneliness felt by a prairie housewife while her husband was off
gallivanting in a snowstorm. She is left to deal with her crazy
sister-in-law, and lingering presence of her deceased father-in-law.
The cast featured Barbara Laing, Courtney Cauthon, Toby Malone, and Robert Fulton playing
Ruth Warren, Hester Warren, Arthur Manning, and Bruce Warren,
respectively.
In the play, Ruth and Bruce Warren are
newlyweds who inherit Bruce’s recently-deceased father’s
farm and continue to work the land with the help of Bruce’s loony
sister, Hester Warren. Hester’s behaviour
throughout the play is almost like that of a five-year-old child,
mischievous and immature. Hester goes about her day making Ruth feel
insignificant and as if she were an alien intruding on Hester’s
own private Idaho. She pokes fun at Ruth and
snaps at her every action as if Ruth had just thrust a dagger into her
heart when actually all Ruth had done was straighten a picture on the
wall. Bruce’s reaction to Hester’s hatred toward Ruth is
anything but comforting, telling Ruth that “She has had a hard
life,” as if this is to justify Hester’s actions.
Throughout the play there are several hints
at Hester’s insanity, but it is really brought out when she finds
out that Bruce is considering selling the farm. At this point
it’s almost as if whatever thread holding Hester to reality has
snapped. She begins to drive herself further into the world she has
created where her father, the house, and herself
are the only objects of any importance in the universe. In the final
scene of the play, Hester, Bruce and Ruth engage in a heated argument
about the sale of the house, ending with Bruce rushing off to tend to a
mare giving birth to a foal and Ruth following after him with a lantern
Hester was supposed to fill for her but didn’t. After Ruth rushes
out of the house, Hester locks the door and turns to a portrait of her
father on the wall and exclaims, “There father, now things will
be just as they always have.” She then proceeds to sit in her
chair and carry on with her knitting, an act commonly used in theatre
to represent craziness.
Trifles, written by Susan Glaspeel and directed by Amanda Lockitch,
was the second play in this feminist production. The cast was made up
of Toby Malone, Trevor Pease, Robert Fulton, Kristin Wallace, and
Jennifer Pogue, playing George Henderson (County Attorney), Henry Peters (Sheriff),
Leis Hale (A neighbouring farmer), Mrs.
Peters, and Mrs. Hale respectively. The setting for the play was
similar to the first one, an old, isolated farmhouse drenched in a
certain amount of craziness.
The cast of the play gathers at the
Wright’s house to perform various tasks in order to solve the
murder of Mr. Wright, a crime for which Mrs. Wright had been arrested.
During this time the men all go about their business of
“solving” the murder, while leaving the women to, as they
see it, discuss trivial matters, such as if the blanket Mrs. Wright was
making was going to be quilted or knotted. Little did they know that
the women were not discussing how the blanket was going to be made, but
rather had found evidence that would convict Mrs. Wright of Mr.
Wright’s murder, and were proceeding to cover it up.
Both plays were meant to present a
woman’s view of situations that all women are said to experience
in one form or another: discrimination by men. If Bruce had listened to
Ruth earlier and sold the dried-up farm and gotten help for his
unstable sister instead of passing her delusional state off as an
innocent product of her “hard life,” he would most likely
have survived the snowstorm. If George and Henry had investigated
further into what they hastily labelled
trivial women’s talk, they might have gotten the appropriate
evidence to convict Mrs. Wright of the murder of her husband.
Discrimination isn’t a situation
reserved just for women; every person on this planet has been subjected
to discrimination in one form or another at some point in their life.
Discrimination arises when we fail to take into consideration the
feelings and opinions of an individual and use stereotyping to assume
an individual’s personality, judging them based on the common stereotype
of gender, ethnicity, social status, etc.
The writers of both performances did an
excellent job in capturing this discrimination within the scripts.
These scripts, however, would have been nothing more then a few lines
on a piece of paper if it hadn’t been for the brilliant acting of
the cast. Courtney Cauthon, Jennifer Pogue,
and Toby Malone were the stars of the show, displaying their incredible
talent and love for the stage. Courtney Cauthon
was like an older, female, less fun and more evil version of Leonardo DiCaprio’s character Arnie
Grape, in What’s Eating
Gilbert Grape. Kudos also go to Toby
Malone for his successful covering of his Australian accent and ability
to perform well not only on WINGS Rugby Football Club, but also on
stage.
In today’s society it is often
necessary for us to slow down and take a look at things from someone
else’s perspective; the authors of these feminist works did an
excellent job of portraying a less common perspective.
