Tag Archives: dayna lea hoffman

Women in wartime: Stars on her Shoulders is inspiring and timely

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Meegan Sweet and Gabby Bernard in Stephen Massicotte’s Stars on Her Shoulders. Photo by Marc Chalifoux.

It makes sense that Remembrance Day weekend brings theatre about World War I. But this year Edmonton playgoers are fortunate to have two world-premiere productions on local stages, both by playwrights with Alberta roots. I wrote about The Two Battles of Francis Pegahmagabow in an earlier post.

Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre is launching its “Saints and Rebels” season with Stephen Massicotte’s play Stars on Her Shoulders, about Canadian nurses in France in 1918. It is directed by artistic producer Heather Inglis. As the play starts, two of the nurses (Hayley Moorhouse and Meegan Sweet) are also patients in a hospital, convalescing from injuries sustained when another hospital was attacked. The story of the attack and of their injuries comes out gradually, as the nurses chafe at inactivity and engage with other hospital staff (Dana Wylie as a starched Scottish Matron, Dayna Lea Hoffman’s Georgie with irrepressible optimism, and Gabby Bernard as Enid, an earnest and well-meaning newbie.)

As Stephen Massicotte pointed out at the playwright talkback earlier this week, the plot is developed through relatively long scenes. Most scenes take place in Emma and Helen’s hospital “hut” or ward, with occasional visits to the Matron’s office or other locations. As we get to know more about Emma, Helen, and the other characters, we also see changes in them. They’re all politically aware, especially Emma (Sweet), who admits to writing her first protest petition at fourteen. So they follow the progress of suffragists (“Suffragette is a slur”, Emma corrects Enid) in working for the right to vote. They point out that the initial move to allow women military personnel to vote, and the female next-of-kin of male military, was an opportunistic move by a government who needed more support for conscription. And one wryly points out that even with a more general enfranchisement,conscientious objectors and immigrants and “Indians” [sic] will still be excluded. Helen (Moorhouse) starts out very guarded, standoffish and sarcastic even with longtime friend and nursing-school classmate Emma. I enjoyed watching her moments of relaxing her guard, and ended up very moved by her pain and bravery.

Emma and Helen want to get back to work soon. Their superiors (both the Matron on stage and the unseen men writing orders) want them to take time to recover, but they also want to present Emma and Helen with medals. This turns out to be a problem, however. Since the Canadian nurses are commissioned officers, they should receive the Military Cross, but the War Office wants to give them the Military Medal, which would be appropriate for enlisted personnel. Female nurses in other jurisdictions are not officers, and acknowledging some Canadian heroines this way would encourage feminists in Britain and other allied forces to negotiate their own status. So Emma protests, and the War Office sticks to their, ahem, guns. The “stars on her shoulders” refer to the lieutenant’s insignia each woman wears, and why they matter.

There’s so much detail to chew on in this play, which wraps up in under two hours. Not too much, and it all fits well with the distinct characters and their experiences. One speech in particular is disturbingly timely this week. I cried when Sweet’s activist character Emma is warning the others that women’s rights can never be assumed permanent – they can all be taken away, and vigilance will always be necessary.

The set is arranged as an alley stage (Brian Bast), with a few rows of seats on two long sides of the convalescent ward. Unlike some alley or in-the-round productions, I didn’t feel like I was missing anything due to where I was sitting. Back rows are on risers, and everyone is close to the action.

Workshop West’s season is their first with completely Pay-What-You-Will pricing, for subscriptions as well as single tickets. Tickets are available here, and Stars on her Shoulders runs until November 17th. I’m thrilled to support this initiative as a subscriber, and I’m excited about the rest of the season too. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen a play program thank donors that include both the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, and the local LGBTQ2S+ institutions Fruit Loop and Evolution Wonderlounge.

Mermaid Legs

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Noori Gill, Mel Bahniuk, Dayna Lea Hoffman, and Tia Ashley Kushniruk in Beth Graham’s Mermaid Legs. Photo by Brianne Jang of BB Collective Photography

When I attended the Workshop West production of Beth Graham’s play Pretty Goblins in 2018, I was struck by how well the playwright (and the actors Nadien Chu and Miranda Allen, directed by Brian Dooley) captured the relationship between two sisters, through years of growing up together, experiencing challenges (some horrific) separately, supporting and resenting and understanding and accepting. After a performance I mentioned to the playwright that some of it had reminded me of my relationship with my own sister, and she said that she didn’t have sisters herself. An earlier play by Graham, The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble, also focuses on three adult siblings, and their differing roles in coping with their aging mother. Again, the relationships as shown were nuanced and easy to relate to.

Skirts Afire, the annual Edmonton women’s arts festival at several local venues this week, is hosting the world premiere of Beth Graham’s Mermaid Legs at the Gateway Theatre. It too focuses on relationships among three sisters, the older ones Scarlett (Noori Gill) and Ava (Mel Bahniuk) and much-younger Billie (Dayna Lea Hoffman). We hear enough about their parents to accept that the sisters are each other’s primary supports. But fascinatingly, in the first scene one character says that this family does not talk about feelings. They show support by problem-solving for each other, by inviting each other for supper, by keeping track of one sister’s schedule and challenging another to ask a divorced co-parent to do his share. And sometimes – that is not enough.

Direction is by Annette Loiselle, and design elements by other contributors enhance the storytelling as well: Narda McCarroll’s set design turns the black-box into a white world of fluttering sheets/wind/waves, uneven rocks, and shifting furniture. Ainsley Hillyard’s choreography for the three sisters and an ensemble of dancers (Mpoe Mogale, Alida Kendell, Tia Ashley Kushniruk) conveys everything from the weighting-down of depression and the struggling to reach through barriers of a broken connection, to the joy of dancing on a beach, alone or at a party. In one scene, tap dance conveys jarring, out-of-context, manic enthusiasm. Rebecca Cypher’s costume design has all the performers in shades of white, conveying their very different personalities in small details. Aaron Macri’s sound design with Binaifer Kapadia’s original music and Whittyn Jason’s lighting design all build the world and contribute to the message.

This play made me realize that many fictional stories about families dealing with the effects of a mood disorder are oversimplified. Sometimes movies or novels make it seem as if getting the right diagnosis, then getting the right medication, are straightforward steps leading to a happy ending — or as if flaws in those steps lead inexorably to a tragic ending.

Mermaid Legs shows that it isn’t that simple. And it shows that the identified patient isn’t the only one who needs to work at becoming healthier.

That it can show these things while being entertaining, beautiful to watch, relatable, and sometimes hilarious, is a tribute to not only the playwright but the whole team. (Oh, and when you think it’s almost over – watch for a very funny physical bit in the game of hairband-keepaway!)

Mermaid Legs is playing at Gateway Theatre (home of Workshop West Playwrights Theatre) until March 10th. Tickets, content warnings, and accessibility information are all available here.

A Hundred Words for Snow is lovely

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Dayna Lea Hoffman in A Hundred Words for Snow. Photo by Epic Photography

I’m not sure what adjectives to use to describe the current Northern Light Theatre production. Because I don’t want to diminish its significance and power if I call it charming, satisfying, thoughtful, or delightful. But it is all of those things, too.

Tatty Hennessy’s script is a more realistic narrative than many of the works Northern Light brings us. Its 15yo narrator (Dayna Lea Hoffman) is Rory, a recently-bereaved 15yo Londoner, relating her experiences and observations in a tone both unique and familiar. After her father’s funeral, she notes the problem of her father’s ashes being in an urn on the kitchen table and her mother being disinclined to do anything about this immediately – so she gets the idea of taking the urn on an adventure that the father, a geography teacher and armchair explorer, had daydreamed about with her and fantasy-planned in a notebook. Of course! She will borrow her mother’s credit card and go scatter the ashes at the North Pole – this makes complete sense to her.

As you should expect from a Northern Light show, brilliantly-executed design elements enhance the narrative. Alison Yanota is credited as production designer, taking care of set, costume, and lighting. Matt Schuurman designed projections on the floor, and Daniela Fernandez was sound designer. Trevor Schmidt directed. The performance is done in the round – I picked a side randomly and did not feel like there was any advantage to being on any side.

The script said some things about grief and about growing up that I am still thinking about. In particular, the concept of trying on grief responses to find what felt appropriate. I also really appreciated that the writer didn’t punish the teenage girl for not thinking things through and for trusting the people she met. As I think I’ve mentioned before in this blog, I’m tired of stories where teenage girls (and, by extension, the audience) are “taught a lesson” by having their risk-taking and initiative result in disasters, whether physical, social, sexual, or legal. Rory’s quest didn’t work the way she’d thought it should – but it still worked out.

Northern Light Theatre requires its patrons to wear masks in the Fringe Studio Theatre – and in the performances I’ve attended this season I’ve seen 100% compliance with this. The play runs until Saturday May 6th, and tickets are available here. I recommend it highly.