DETAILS

Amber Lights by Urban Curvz Theatre
Birds & Stone Theatre
Wednesday, November 12 - Saturday, November 22

More in: Theatre

For the past four seasons, Urban Curvz has been dedicated to telling women’s stories through theatre. In order to assist the next generation of female artists in telling the stories they feel are important, Urban Curvz has introduced The Heroines Series, which features three plays written, produced and directed by emerging artists. The first of this series is Amber Lights, written by Simone Saunders (a recent graduate of the University of Alberta’s acting conservatory) this past February at the 24 Hour Playwriting Competition. The play is directed by Jennifer Roberts.

Amber Lights is about the infamous Yellowhead Highway that runs between Prince George and Prince Rupert, B.C., where over 24 women have been abducted in the last 30 years, earning it the nickname the Highway of Tears. Saunders’s script is the fictional story of Leah, a First Nations teenager played by Alison Murray. Leah’s stepmother Sarah, played by Michelle Warkentin, decides to stay on the reserve after Leah’s father dies, which causes a great deal of tension between the two. Leah decides to spend most of her time hitchhiking along the highway. Leah’s attacker, Sadie, is played by David Haysom.

All of the plays produced in the Heroines Series will take place at Birds and Stone, an intimate, dark and imposing basement theatre that is the perfect venue for this play. As the audience walks down a long hallway lined with flashing amber lights leading to the door of the theatre, there is already an overwhelming feeling of anticipation. The lights, like warnings of a great disaster ahead on the highway, generate anxiety.

The theatre is almost full on opening night and as the lights fade to black, a hip hop beat mixed with a First Nations chanting song rising up over the speakers. It fills the space with youthful energy as the three characters go through a repetitive physical routine that is indicative of their changing emotional states. Though the stage is small, each character has their own space and performs independently of the others. The music fades out while Leah and Sadie exit, leaving Sarah alone to cry at her kitchen table with a single light above her.

Warkentin shows us a woman torn between the community she lives in and her concern for her stepdaughter, who is depicted by Murray as the stereotypical condescending teenager who thinks she knows everything.

Haysom’s portrayal of Sadie is that of a gentle giant who speaks slowly and deliberately in jumbled sentence fragments that are, at times, almost poetic. The single light bulb hanging above his chair provides him with a menacing appearance.

There are points in the play when two moments in time are depicted simultaneously. Sarah delivers a speech to the reservation, pleading for help from the community to help her set up a fictional block watch program to serve as a warning system, which she calls the Amber Lights. At the same time, we witness Sadie luring Leah into his car and inevitably attacking her.

All of the cast members deliver poignant performances — a testament to Saunders’s script and Roberts’s direction. All three are extremely clear and believable in their motives and intentions. However, I wonder if it might have been more effective to not have the attack take place onstage? Often times it is what we don’t see that can be the most upsetting.