Lyric Theatre is hosting world premiere of play by Swift Current playwright
A dramatic event on the global stage prevented the Lyric Theatre three years ago from hosting the premiere of a play by Swift Current playwright Wendy Lockman, but theatre fans will finally be able to see the world launch of Burn Rubber, Dolly!
The play was scheduled to open in 2020 during the same week as restrictions on public events were imposed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It will now be revealed to audiences during seven performances at the Lyric Theatre starting April 6.
Lockman appreciates the commitment of the Lyric Theatre to host the world premiere after a three-year wait.
“I've been calling it the little play that could,” she said. “Gordon and the Lyric stuck with it, which they certainly didn't have to. So I'm just incredibly grateful and humbled that they're still able to put it on and just excited. It's great.”
Gordon McCall, the Lyric Theatre's artistic and executive director, is thrilled to finally present the play to audiences.
“We absolutely love this play,” he said. “We're extremely proud that it is from Swift Current, that we have a writer of Wendy's calibre in our midst, that it is all about home. This play takes place in the 1950s on a farm in Saskatchewan and it's a family drama.”
In hindsight, he felt the production of the play will actually benefit from the delay to bring it to the stage.
“Starting all over again for us as performing theatre artists is not necessarily a bad thing,” he noted. “You get to revisit the play from almost a fresh perspective and new things open up for you in the play. We have the great benefit of having Wendy in rehearsals with us at times, whereas in the first attempt at mounting it we couldn't have, because she wasn't able to attend at the time.”
It is a coming-of-age story of two sisters set on a farm in rural Saskatchewan. Their love for each other guides them through trying times of dealing with an obstinate father, broken dreams, and dangerous encounters.
“At the end of the play there's a real sense of closure and resolution,” he noted. “Wendy is a great writer in terms of understanding how to write what's called a well-made play, which is actually a term that's used in theatre. … A wellmade play is a very simple thing with beginning, middle and end, basically in one location. It's amazing how many writers have difficulty with that form, but Wendy seems to excel in it and we're the better off for it as actors, as director and as audience members.”
Lockman grew up in Swift Current and considers herself to be a city slicker with some rural roots. She has fond memories of visiting her grandparents in the Val Marie area and the play is therefore also a tribute to them. She noted the first drafts of this play was written about 10 years ago.
“I just wanted to write a coming-of-age story,” she recalled. “I find them to be almost magical, because you get to watch someone discover who they are and what they want. There's such hope and promise in that. I also didn't want the people holding my lead character back to be villains, because it's just basically a complex family who loves each other. They're just afraid of change and afraid of letting their loved one go and grow up and leave the nest.”
The various interactions between the five characters in the play take place in a farm kitchen, which provides a perfect setting for different reasons.
“I wanted to introduce it as the heart of the home, which I think it often is, especially in a smaller home,” she explained. “It's where people share meals together and discussions and cook, but I also wanted to slowly introduce the fact that it's a pressure cooker. These characters are sort of trapped in this small space and as the lead character really wants to leave and pursue her dreams, that kitchen almost starts to feel smaller. … So it serves two purposes. It's that home-sweet-home feel, but then it shifts quite quickly to a feeling of containment.”
She decided to set the play in the 1950s to provide the lead character another challenge to overcome, because it was a decade during which young women were just starting to go to college.
“I thought if I added an additional obstacle of setting it in the 1950s, it's just one more hurdle that she has to jump through,” she said. “And the other nice thing about the 1950s is it's such a fun decade in terms of verbiage. I loved researching the slang and the jargon that era used, and there's a ton of it in the play, which adds a fun, charming quality to the way that they speak. It's so funny, because even insults that they use sound charming.”