PTE audio tales draw on Winnipeg history

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This article was published 24/02/2021 (2052 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When we meet 89-year-old Lillian Gibbons in Stories Houses Tell, a new audio work from local playwright Ellen Peterson, she is in a boat on the Amazon, struggling to write a letter before she dies. “I’m having trouble with words,” Lillian confesses. This isn’t just a source of frustration for her, but pain.

Gibbons, you see, was a writer, once — a newspaperwoman with a fondness for colourful suits. A chronicler of the stories houses tell, which was the name of her column in the Winnipeg Tribune. The city’s wrecking balls cause her pain, too. “When I walk down the streets in Winnipeg now, all I can see is what’s no longer there,” she says. So she decamps to a different river city, this one in Brazil, only to find they’re the same.

Lillian Gibbons was a real person. The end of her story, beautifully imagined here by Peterson and performed by Maggie Nagle with direction from Hazel Venzon, is part of Winnipeg Stories, a trio of intimate audio works commissioned by Prairie Theatre Exchange, supported by Safe at Home Manitoba.

Gibbons real-life columns were compiled into a book in the 1960s called Stories Houses Tell, which Peterson read and loved.

“But she’s also a house of a kind, right, because the story is curled up inside her. Additionally, she’s housed herself in a persona, and in a manner of dressing and speaking, she’s kind of put up a safe house around herself that way.” – Playwright Ellen Peterson

“I thought the whole thing was fascinating,” she says. “And I loved the title — I wish I’d written it, you know? I sort of half thought, ‘well, maybe I’ll write something about that someday,’ and then 20 years go by. When Thomas (Morgan Jones, PTE’s artistic director) commissioned stories from a group of us, I thought this might be a chance to sort of explore and see what I can do with, with Lillian as a character.”

Houses are only one kind of home explored in this work. Our bodies are also our homes.

“There are the physical houses, the apartment on Smith Street, or the various buildings, the bishop’s house — there are those kinds of houses, and (Lillian) says they’re just a place for an idea to grow in,” Peterson says.

“But she’s also a house of a kind, right, because the story is curled up inside her. Additionally, she’s housed herself in a persona, and in a manner of dressing and speaking, she’s kind of put up a safe house around herself that way.”

Stories Houses Tell was not initially meant to be strictly an audio piece, but the format suited Peterson’s evocative script.

“I found it really interesting to try to get the story across without people being able to see anything — because she really did die on a boat on the Amazon,” Peterson says. “You can find a certain amount about her online — and a couple of nice pictures in the suits and gloves. But just the idea that it’s a Winnipeg story that’s happening on the Amazon intrigued me.”

Water also figures prominently in Winn nipi, from Anishinaabe playwright Jo MacDonald. Directed by Katie German and perfomed by Rosanna Deerchild, Winn nipi is an affecting reflection on our rivers — the stories they tell, the secrets they keep.

MacDonald looked at the name of our city; nipi, being the Cree word for water, and water is life. As she writes in her piece, “for thousands of years these rivers heard stories from the Anishinaabe and Cree. Stories that held a People together. Held traditions and ceremonies together. Held hearts together. This winn nipi.”

“Because it’s an Indigenous name, I thought I would try to incorporate as much language as I could,” MacDonald says. “Now, I originally had written it in Anishinaabe-Ojibwe language, but because Rosanna is Cree, I changed it to honour her language. That’s something that our communities would have done in the past. When you’re asking someone to do something, you do it in the most honourable and best way.”

Liam Zarrillo’s The Green Building rounds out the trio. Directed by Stephanie Sy and written and performed by Zarrillo, this piece captures the particular ache of demolition — of a meaningful building, yes, but also a way of life, an expectation, or a dream.

It was inspired by a real lime-green building in Winnipeg’s West End, a building that was going to be transformed into a community space but then came down. Demolitions in this city tend to draw a crowd; people feel ownership of its buildings. When Zarrillo’s father read The Green Building, he was reminded of being a 10-year-old newcomer to Winnipeg and taking the bus to the Eaton’s building, “and what is sort of meant for him and his memories when that building came down,” Zarrillo says. “The impact that the absence or the elimination of these places can have on folks is super intriguing.”

Creating an audio-only work raises the stakes, Zarrillo says. “You are suddenly in relationship with the listener in a very intimate way. And so that element of storytelling, that element of connection, kicks it up to a new level.”

You can listen to all three audio stories for free until March 31 at www.pte.mb.ca. Each audio story runs approximately 10-15 minutes.

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @JenZoratti