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BLYTH FESTIVAL SALUTE, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 28/29, 2006. PAGE 17.
Celebrating
teachers
With Schoolhouse, Leanna Brodie
recalls the influence teachers had
on her own life
•••
By Keith Roulston
Citizen staff
Leanna Brodie has dedicated her
play Schoolhouse, to two teachers
who taught her when she attended a
two-room schoolhouse at Bewdley,
south of Peterborough.
The teachers aren't remembered
because they were fun people to be
around, she recalled recently in a
telephone interview, but "they were
fair and considerate and they had
high expectation of all of the
children." The teachers' presence
and manner said that all the children
were valued, she recalls.
It is the story of the teachers that
she set out to tell in Schoolhouse, not
the story of the one-room
schoolhouse itself or the warm
memories people have of those small
schools. Miss Linton, the, teacher at
the heart of her story is like many
teachers of the early part of the last
century. She's 18 years old, barely a
year out of school herself with just
one year of normal school training
and suddenly finds hetself in charge
of a classroom of children from four
years all the way up to maybe 18.
The job of these young teachers
was to impart not only education in
scholarly subjects, btit social skills
and discipline, she says. The
students would bring the local
community into the classroom, but
the teacher's values would also go
out into the community through her
influence on the students.
The role of the teacher is what
stands out for Brodie from her many
interviews with people who
remembered the one-room-school
days. She had been commissioned
by Festival artistic director Eric
Coates to write a play on the subject,
then won a playwright-in-residence
grant from the Ontario Arts Council
to work with 4th Line Theatre at
Millbrook, near her original home.
When people heard she was writing
about a one-room schoolhouse, she
recalls, they were more than happy
to share their experiences. One
woman spent a day bringing in
people singly and in groups to speak
with Brodie. She ended with hours
of taped conversations.
It was months before she even
wrote a word as she tried to find
what the play should be about and
what shape it should take. In the end,
she says, what struck her was not
just the conversations she had had
with former teachers but also those
with the students of those teachers
who spoke of the influence the
teachers had had on their lives.
Something else that came out of
those conversations was the
"training school boy", a young boy
who had gotten in trouble with the
law, had been sent to training school.
When he was finished, he would
often be sent to work on a farm to
get him away from his previous bad
influences, but also in belief that
hard work would straighten him out.
But this stranger was suddenly
injected into a close-knit community
where it was often difficult to fit in.
And so the second important
character in Brodie's play is Ewart,
the training school boy.
"It's about children in this close-
knit community who were cared for
and accepted and what happened
when they weren't," she says. "I
wanted to talk about the challenges
and problems that exist in any age."
Brodie has set the story in the
fictional community of Bakers
Corners in 1937. It's a time and
locale she's familiar with from her
play For Home and Country, about
the Women's Institute movement
which was performed at 4th Line
Theatre. The research for the earlier
play helped her understanding of the
day-to-day life of the community in
the 1930s.
It's that play that brought her to
the attention of the Blyth Festival
though it took a while before she had
Leana Brodie: bringing to life
the one-room-schoolhouse era.
an idea of a play she could write to
take up the commission offered by
the Festival.
The earlier research. also gave her
episodes she used in the play. She
went to a disastrous euchre party
held by a Women's Institute and so
Miss Linton also experiences the
embarrassment of being introduced
to a game she doesn't know.
Already Schoolhouse has been
scheduled for 2007 season at 4th
Line Theatre. Working at the two
very different theatres offers rewards
and challenges, Brodie says. At 4th
Line, she'll have use of an unlimited
cast, including lots of children. At
Blyth, she has a more limited cast,
but she has access to a pool of top-
flight actors. Also there are all the
technical equipment and talents at
the indoor Blyth theatre that aren't
available for the outdoor, daylight
performances at 4th Line. If you
want to get someone off stage at
Blyth without the audience seeing it,
you just turn off the lights, she
laughs.
The differences between the two
theatres will also affect how the play
is performed. In Blyth it, will be
about a group of people who get
together to tell the story they
remember from their youth. Adults
will play the children at some points.
Brodie came to theatre not as a
writer but as an actor. After writing
stories when she was younger she
gave up, probably because writing
essays in university knocked the
creativity out of writing, she says.
Asked why she returned to writing
she laughs: "My 30th birthday.
You're no longer an ingenue but
you're too young to play the mother-
in-law."
Her writing has expanded to
radio where CBC Radio recently
Continued on page 20
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