The incredible (unbelievable?) history of Saskatoon
He’s been on the fringe of the Fringe as a fan. Now, Mitch Cassidy is in the middle of it with his own play.
“It was just sort of wanting to be more involved after watching it all these years,” says Cassidy, a senior civil engineering student at the University of Saskatchewan.
His play is a humorously false history called Lake: The Founding of Saskatoon. “We were very careful not to do any actual historical research,” Cassidy said.
Historical inaccuracies include the claim that the Victoria Bridge was named after Saskatoon’s first bar and that a famous duel took place in the city’s early days.
The narrator is clearly unreliable: Blind Barry Riversdale, played by Cassidy, who has a faulty memory and a taste for the bottle.
The theatre company name is Profoundly Unqualified Productions, but there was a lot of work behind it.
Cassidy and friend Jack Fotheringham wrote the script over four months last summer.
“We thought it would be an interesting creative challenge to put together a full play. We were really happy with what we had,” Cassidy said.
They used Facebook and posters on campus to round up the cast. It’s an all-student effort, with people from engineering, agriculture, computer science, business, English and political studies. No one is from the drama department, although they weren’t excluded.
“Getting a real feel for all of the characters over the course of the summer was great but then it was even more fun the first time we got a full cast together to read through it this spring. It was great to see what people could do with the characters,” Cassidy says.
“Even though it is by definition an amateur cast — we’re all just sort of volunteering our time — I’m really happy with how things have been going. The quality of the acting has been quite good.”
Even though the history might be sketchy, it looks as if the intentions behind the play are pure.
“It has been a labour of love from a group of young people who are passionate about our local arts scene,” Cassidy says.