TWISTED SISTERS
Playwright takes dark look at siblings
Edmonton is blessed with funny women. Not just strange-funny, although we like them, too — but laugh-out-loud funny. Think onstage talents such as Hey Ladies, with the outrageous comic stylings of Leona Brausen, Davina Stewart and Cathleen Rootsaert.
But the city is also home to women with comic chops who often dwell behind the scenes. These are the writers who pen stories that bubble with laughter and may even deliver a thoughtful message, if you can stop peeing your pants long enough to listen. Now I’m pointing to talents such as playwrights Connie Massing, Cat Walsh, and, coming soon to a theatre near you, Beth Graham.
For nearly 20 years, the fine arts grad from the University of Alberta has been trying to make you laugh, while also indulging her love of the macabre, the dark and the disturbing. In her latest play, Pretty Goblins, Graham takes the audience on a sometimes comic, sometimes grim, journey through the lives of twin sisters, Laura and Lizzie. A tragedy sends them reeling in different directions, but a ferocious, primordial link keeps them connected, regardless of wildly divergent lifestyles.
“It came from an obsession, because I don’t have a sister, and I’ve always been curious about what it would be like to have one,” says Graham of her choice of twin female characters. “I wanted to explore a family relationship that would be as close as I could imagine.”
It’s not the first time Graham has written about twins. In her 2011 collaboration with Nathan Cuckow — Victor and Victoria’s Terrifying Tale of Terrible Things, fraternal twins uncover a sinister family secret.
“There is something about two people who are never really alone. They start out in the womb hearing each other’s heartbeat and I’ve been really fascinated by that.”
The title of Pretty Goblins, presented by Workshop West, and the names of its characters, are inspired by a poem called Goblin Market, written around 1860 by Christina Rossetti. The poem is about two little girls who skip merrily to the local stream, where goblin merchants are known to hawk strange fruits at twilight. Lizzie chooses not to partake. But Laura offers to trade a lock of her hair, and a “tear more rare than pearl,” for the chance to nibble at the goblin produce, which makes her crazy in a way she quite enjoys.
Graham, co-author of awardwinning plays such as The Drowning Girls, sees the poem as a commentary on addiction. In this, her take on the cycle of compulsion and revulsion, Graham explores the different factors that lead one person toward addiction, while under similar circumstances, another person avoids that particular abyss.
“There are so many reasons, a lot of them inexplicable,” says Graham of the journey into, or away from, alcohol or drug abuse.
The playwright, a Governor General award finalist for The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble (seen at Theatre Network in 2014), is drawn to stories that illustrate how we cope with the myriad challenges — tragic, heroic, mythic — that cross our paths over a lifetime. She is inspired by the work of writers such as playwright Wendy Lill (The Glace Bay Miner’s Museum) and novelist Miriam Toews (All My Puny Sorrows).
“I love seeing people overcome adverse challenges,” says Graham. “I love something that takes you on an emotional journey.”
Playwrighting itself is an emotional journey, and Graham feels lucky that for at least the last 10 years, that journey has avoided stops waiting tables or walking dogs. Up next for Graham? A collaboration with Theatre Yes (The Elevator Project), which is producing Slight of Mind, due to premier in March of 2019 as part of the Citadel’s Beyond the Stage series.
“There is a group of us creating (Slight of Mind) together and I’m the lead playwright on it. We’re already
doing workshops on themes and what we might be interested in,” says Graham. “That’s exciting for me.”
“Sometimes, when you’re working in theatre, you don’t have those magical experiences and it’s just work. But sometimes you do. Sometimes its creative, and it really feeds me. You work your hardest and then you have to just hope after that.”
It came from an obsession, because I don’t have a sister, and I’ve always been curious about what it would be like to have one.