Back in October 2007, Catherine Banks’ play, Bone
Cage, had its original and only run on stage. Produced at Neptune
Studio, there were some 10 performances over eight days, a series the
playwright herself describes as “short.” The play was presented by
Forerunner Playwrights Theatre, which, by its nature, involves the
playwright as co-producer, with Ship’s Company Theatre in Parrsboro
lending help with fundraising and set construction.
Bone Cage tells the story of 22-year-old Jamie, a woodlot
worker processing trees and the bleakness of his own future, his
lack of direction and the pain and grief seizing members of his family.
And he’s on the eve of his wedding to 17-year-old Krista, to boot.
Since that inaugural production, Bone Cage has received the
2008 Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama (English) and has been
shortlisted for the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, which
will be presented on Wednesday. Bone Cage was released by
Toronto-based Playwrights Canada Press last year.
After a first print run of 500 copies, the book is in a second
printing. “Who you hope will read it are all the artistic directors
across the country,” Banks says. “But also, it gets picked up by
universities too.”
The play was part of a contemporary drama course in the English
department at Mount Saint Vincent University. Banks recently addressed
the class and gave a reading. Theatre companies in Winnipeg and Calgary
are in line to produce it.
Playwriting draws on symbolism and spare language, Banks says. “A
play has to be pared down to the essentials.” Reading a play between
covers has its own rewards, she says. “It’s like pure storytelling, how
you hang out in coffee shops and pretend to write a letter and listen
to conversation.”
Growing up, Banks’ family lived throughout southwestern Nova
Scotia—Middleton, Kingston, Barrington, Port Maitland, Digby. “I went
into a number of communities and I learned to listen before I talked.
You really do have to slowly enter some of these isolated communities,
like Barrington.” With her own family (a daughter and a son) she lived
for a time in Stewiacke, the landscape of which gave Bone Cage its setting.
The GG, as the national award is known, came with a $25,000 purse;
the Savage, as it’s called, offers $1,500 to the winner. According to
Banks, a playwright receives a fee for having a play produced in the
range of $1,000 to $1,500. She waived her fee for that inaugural
production in the fall of 2007. Banks also declined her cut of box
office sales (usually 10 percent of the total). And she invested $3,000
of her own money. She recouped her investment but didn’t make any
profit from the performances.
The play’s budget was $38,000, a large portion of which went to
paying for Neptune Studio, “which is very expensive to rent,” Banks
says. Despite the cost, the space was the only one in town that could
accommodate the set design: a steel bridge, with “the high,” where
Jamie hung out with his buddies, drank beer and thought about his
life.
“It is frustrating,” Banks says of the lack of affordable, adaptable
space for different theatre projects. Besides space, local theatre
companies were reluctant to take on Bone Cage because of its
cast size (seven, a larger number by today’s standards) and “language.”
Did Banks mean the profanity?
“Yeah, isn’t that amazing? Right now, in the theatre community I
think that there’s a fear of losing audience when the language is kind
of difficult—in some areas.
“Personally, I think it’s a trend. Small companies that really feel
that they have to woo their audiences—not alienate their
audiences—are very careful around language and even subject matter.”
But, she adds, “They’ve been so devastated by cuts, to be fair to the
companies.” Government funding and corporate sponsorships have
decreased.
“Because the Canada Council encourages companies to commission and
get new plays out there, what tends to happen is everybody’s investing
in the new
play. No one’s doing a second production because they can’t
get an extra boost for that.”
But a play needs to be “out there earning,” while the playwright
works on the next one. This makes the hope the book reaches the right
hands even greater.
Savage Award finalists reading, Tuesday, April 14 at
The Company House, 2202 Gottingen, 8pm, 420-0711. Atlantic Book Awards,
Alderney Landing Theatre, Wednesday, April 15 at 7pm, free
admission/cash bar.
Related Stories
Bone Cage breaks out
This article appears in Apr 9-15, 2009.