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Francis Pegahmagabow: more than two battles and a wry wit

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Monica Gate, Julie Golosky, and Garret Smith, in The Two Battles of Francis Pegamagabow, at Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc Chalifoux.

The Two Battles of Francis Pegahmagabow, by Neil Grahn, opened last night at Shadow Theatre. Today, November 8th, is National Indigenous Veterans’ Day. So it’s a timely opportunity to experience the story of one of them, in this world premiere directed by John Hudson and Christine Sokaymoh Frederick. I knew it was going to be about an indigenous soldier in World War One, and about the challenges he faced from racist/hostile regimes in Canada after returning home with medals, but I didn’t know much else. Garret Smith plays the eponymous Francis Pegahmagabow, and he starts the tale with military posture and heavy khaki, addressing the audience (or some other audience, it’s not clear and doesn’t matter), and explaining that the following narrative jumps around in time and we’ll have to pay attention. After that warning, I didn’t find it hard to follow.

It does jump around, with many short scenes, alternating between war scenes in and out of the trenches, and a mostly sequential series of glimpses from other important experiences in his life. There’s an ensemble of five other talented actors, each playing multiple roles with shifts in costume elements, posture, and accent: Trevor Duplessis (last seen at Shadow in Cottagers and Indians, and more recently in a reading at Workshop West’s Springboards festival), Julie Golosky (I know I’ve seen her on stage before but I can’t remember where), Monica Gate, and Ben Kuchera play military men, white bureaucrats, members of Pegahmagabow’s community (then called Parry Island Band), and various family members. The scenes where he meets and woos Eva, his future wife (Gate) despite her parents’ (Duplessis and Golosky) reluctance are especially charming. Kuchera has a continuing role as a naive fellow soldier, and disturbing ones as Indian Agents refusing Pegamagabow’s applications to the band’s loan fund, and threatening him with RCMP action if he doesn’t cease his political advocacy.

In warfare scenes, we see that Francis has hunting skills and knowledge that enable him to be an unusually effective solo sniper. We also see that his superiors want him to follow orders and rules – take a partner, go out when there’s a full moon – despite his insistence that he can do things better his own way. In conversation with the audience, he explains that being good at killing people is a terrible gift. Short vignettes allude to the available facts behind his three wartime decorations.

In wartime action, his peers and superiors show typical microaggressions (not learning to pronounce his name), but seem to accept him for his skills. After returning home, however, he encounters one frustration after another. The determination and volatility that made him an effective fighter are now employed as he becomes Chief of his Band and founder of national indigenous advocacy groups. Other members of his Band (Golosky and Gate) heckle him and suggest that he’s acting in his own interest. And his reputation of being unstable, quick to anger, or unreliable gets used against him by bureaucrats. It’s heartbreaking, except for the moments when he shows his pride in successes. When World War Two arrives, and the RCMP come knocking to enforce conscription, he and Eva send their boys away for their safety, and he adds that “None of our children ever went to residential school either”.

One of my favourite things about this script and production was the humour, especially the way Francis engages the audience on his side, allowing us to share his wry understated amusement at the predictable injustices of his life, starting with receiving a medal from the King who can’t pronounce his name. There are several moments in the script that break the fourth wall or theatre conventions – he compliments the booth crew on the nice job they did on the moon, and some other fun bits I won’t spoil. It’s not a completely happy story, but it’s told with a very light touch and Smith’s delivery makes me want to watch him in something else.

The abstract set (Cindi Zuby) provides opportunities for active scenes that feel like battlefield expeditions, like moments of comfort in trenches, like intimacy sitting together at home sharing bannock, and like meetings in offices and in convention halls. A backdrop evokes rough-torn cured hides and silhouetted landscape, and creates a surface for projections.

The Two Battles of Francis Pegahmagabow continues until November 24th, with tickets available here.

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.