HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2005-06-29, Page 12PAGE 12, BLYTH FESTIVAL SALUTE, JUNE 29/30, 2005
Family’s life
brought to
Bly th stage
Denyse Gervais Regan: writing
from experience.
Family of 14 meant special
problems in hard times
. of the Great Depression
unfold on the stage again and she’s
happy it’s at Blyth.
“I really like the people there,” she
said. “I trust them and they're very
professional. They’re very easy to
work with and it’s a real nice
atmosphere:”
Regan now has three children and
five grandchildren, all of whom live
in London, where she resides. She
says her whole family, brothers and
sisters, will be coming to opening
night, which also happens to be
around the same time as another
family celebration.
“My brother, Marcel, is the
Afchbishop of Ottawa and he is
celebrating 25 years as a Bishop. My
two older brothers are dead, but I
have family in Detroit and Quebec.
Charlie, who is a missionary, has
come in from Equador, and we’re all
going to Ottawa. The whole family
is going down to celebrate that for
the whole week and we’re all staying
together.”
Regan said she did this play, not
only to honour her parents, but to
show gratitude to older siblings who
gave up education to help raise the
family.
“There are older siblings who are
still around that gave up so much.
Like in our family, the last seven are
educated and the older seven are not.
They had to help mom and dad look
after us. I feel like I owe them a debt
of gratitude because they stayed
home, and we younger ones got our
education.”
6est ptace In Town To Take 4
^AD^HOP
By Sarah Mann
Special to The Citizen
“I am the thirteenth one,” Denyse
Gervais Regan says in a gentle voice
when asked about her new play The
Thirteenth One.
Bom in 1938, she is the thirteenth
child in a family of 14. At the age of
four, her mom had been put in an
orphanage by her mother who
promised to return after she left her
husband. Before the mother could
come back, the father came and took
the child.
“Her mother tried to get her
back.” Gervais Regan said, “but her
father had the money, the family, the
name and all of her mother’s family
had moved away. The last time my
mom saw her mother was when she
was four years old. She never saw
her again until she had children of
her own.”
Growing up in Manitoba, Gervais
Regan’s mother and father were
neighbours. They went through
school together and then got
married. “They were poor, of
course,” she explains, “everybody
was in those days.”
“She had all these children and
finally, she had me. I was the 13th
one. She almost died and had to be
hospitalized.”
Not long after Gervais Regan was
born, a “rich lady” who owned a
store in town heard about her mother
being unwell and poor.
“She literally came knocking at
the door and wondered if they could
help each other out and if she could
have the baby.”
Gervais Regan wouldn’t continue
the story after that. “Now you have
to go see the play,” she said.
Unlike many of the plays at Blyth,
Regan is somewhat new to the game.
A mother and a teacher, Gervais
Regan had always enjoyed writing.
She and her husband would give
marriage talks, and she loved to
write letters.
“Mom always used to love reading
my letters she would read them over
and over,” she said.
Growing up, Regan heard her
mother’s story many times. Her
mother would always say “my life
would make a good book and I hope
someday somebody writes it.”
Regan said she looked around and
no one was writing it. It was her
husband who said, “What’s wrong
with you? Go out there and do it.”
So Regan did what any teacher
would do and started collecting data
and facts. She travelled to Manitoba
found the official document that
showed when her mom was put in
this orphanage and when she was
taken out. She also interviewed
people who worked with her
grandfather.
“As I'm gathering this information
I’m taking writing courses and
enjoying them tremendously. After a
couple of years of taking courses, 1
was asked to do a reading at the end
of one...at the end, they cheered.
And I thought, shit. I’m that writer
I’ve been looking for. It
overwhelmed me.
. Regan continued taking courses at
the University of Western Ontario
and always made good use of the
writers in residence. Tim Lilburn, a
writer in residence at Western, read
it and told Regan she had “a gift for
dialogue.” He suggested making it
into a play, which Regan had never
thought of.
“After that,” she said, “it came so
much easier to me.”
The children’s theatre in London
did a production of it at Western and
it went over well. After, there were
workshops in Toronto. Montreal and
one in Port Dover with Robert
Moore. Moore kept telling Regan
“it’s not if I do your play, it’s when.”
“I’m looking around and one year
goes by, two. then three and I’m
getting tired of waiting.”
In the meantime, Regan began
screenwriting courses and is now
almost finished a screenplay version
of The Thirteenth One.
She met Gil Garratt while doing a
reading of two scenes at the Grand
Theatre. She gave him a full copy of
the script, he liked it and told artistic
director Eric Coates about it.
“So, Eric pulled my script I mailed
him out of the pile, read it, liked it
and called me.”
Regan is thrilled to see the story
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