Director Glenda Stirling brings one of Kevin Kerr’s plays to life

DETAILS

Unity (1918) by Kevin Kerr
Martha Cohen Theatre
Tuesday, September 23 - Saturday, October 11

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Kevin Kerr will be getting around the Calgary theatre scene with three plays hitting local stages this season, starting with Alberta Theatre Projects’ production of Unity (1918), a surprisingly funny tale of war, loss and community on the Prairies.

Unity (1918) takes place in Unity, Saskatchewan, a town about 200 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon. It’s set in 1918 during the last few months of the First World War and the arrival of the Spanish influenza, which killed more than 20 million people worldwide; more than the number of casualties on the battlefields of the war.

The play tells the story of the community as it awaits the return of local soldiers from Europe and faces the devastating realities of the war and the flu.

The story is framed by diary entries of a local farm girl, Beatrice Wilde, who has just turned 21. Her best friend, Mary, has just received a marriage proposal from her soldier boyfriend overseas, and Beatrice has been busy sending hundreds of pairs of hand-knit socks to her beloved soldier, Glen.

The undertaker’s niece, a young girl named Suna who ends up running the town mortuary, also enters the story, along with the undertaker’s son, Hart, who returns to town after being blinded in battle by mustard gas.

“The play examines this period of history that we’ve romanticized,” says director Glenda Stirling. “It’s celebrating the romance, the innocence, the love, but it’s also forcing us to step away from that innocence,” she adds.

“At this period, the war and soldiers were highly romanticized. The young girls who are romancing the soldiers, their view of everything is quite romantic. But their view of the flu jolts them into seeing things a different way. Do you die a hero’s death overseas if you die of the flu?” Stirling adds.

Unity (1918) wraps us in the world of young people dealing with issues far above their maturity level.

“What really appealed to me about Unity was the young people dealing with the end of the world. There are so many resonances with what’s going on with young people today and what young people are facing,” says ATP artistic director Bob White. “All of a sudden you turn around today and you can’t even have a deli sandwich because the meat supply is fucked. It’s overwhelming.”

“The challenge for many young people today is to find hope. With Unity, we can look at a different time period and see how they did it,” he adds.

With all the serious themes underlying the play, Unity (1918) remains a comedy. “It’s freakin’ hilarious. Teenagers falling in love for the first time are hilarious,” says Stirling. “Life is full of misery and hilarity. No moment in our life is full of only one shade. Kevin does this beautifully.”