The Citizen, 2003-06-25, Page 39PAGE 14. BLYTH FESTIVAL SALUTE, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 2003.
‘Having Hope at Home’ inspired by Craig’s son’s birth
Comedy looks at families
David S. Craig set out to write a stoiy about home birth, but
ended up fascinated by the family he created.
By Keith Roulston
Citizen staff
The setting for Having Hope at
Home— a rural farmhouse — may
be familiar but playwright David S.
Craig gives the Blyth Festival
audience something entirely new: a
birth of a baby on stage.
Well not really, of course, but
discreetly depicted birth is the
centrepiece of the comedy about a
young woman who decides she
wants to have her child at home, to
the horror of her visiting parents.
“The play is really about a young
woman who wants to do things her
way,” says Craig in a telephone
interview from his Toronto office.
It’s about different generations of a
family, a theme present in big hits
like the movie My Big Fat Greek
Wedding and Mambo Italiano, a
runaway stage hit in Toronto this
past winter.
While the words don’t quite have
the same ring this play is really “My
Big Fat WASP Birthing”, Craig
jokes.
There are many similarities among
all families but a typical white
Anglo-Saxon Protestant family has a
difference. “It’s all about not telling
the truth — what you’re really
thinking — because it might upset
someone,” Craig says. “WASPs
have a sense that getting people
upset would be vulgar so everyone
sits around and pretends
everything’s all right.”
In the play the expectant Carolyn,
played by newcomer Mary
Krohnert, wants to have her baby at
home and has already lined up the
midwife when her parents arrive.
Their disapproval is so strong she
tries to hide the signs that she has
gone into labour.
The inspiration for the story harks
back to the birth of Craig’s son
Andrew in 1985. “Like good
grownup hippies,” he says, of
himself and his wife, actress Robin
Craig, “we wanted to have the baby
at home. We thought it would be a
better experience for us and a less
technical, medical experience for the
baby. We wanted the best for our
baby.”
Ironically it was their midwife
who suggested the signs were not
right for Robin to have the baby at
home.
But it was an experience of that
midwife, Dawn King, that proved
the inspiration for Having Hope at
Home. She recalled helping with a
birth in an eastern Ontario farm
house where the expectant mother
was in the midst of delivery when
her parents walked in the door.
Horrified, they created a huge
argument with their daughter that
was so upsetting to her, the labour
actually stopped. The idea that a
family disagreement could stop a
seemingly unstoppable force of
nature stuck in his mind.
Craig says he started writing the
play as an argument in favour of
home birth, but then he got involved
with characters and they took on a
life of their own. “I became more
interested in the people and their
relationship as a family.”
The experience of home birth “can
connect a family” particularly the
husband and wife but also any
children that are involved. “You
climb a mountain together,” he says.
While all this sounds serious,
Craig says he’s confident the
audience will find the play warm and
funny, especially after veteran actor
Jerry Franken broke up while
reading the script in a workshop.
Still, he says, he’s nervous as
rehearsals approach.
“It’s nerve-wracking. The
playwright has the most on the line
(with success or failure). The
director will still have a job. The
actors will go on to other projects.
You’re the only one who really
needs this to be a success.”
Craig has had his share of success
as writer and artistic director for
Roseneath Theatre, a Toronto theatre
that produces and tours small cast,
high quality plays for family
audiences. The theatre’s production
Danny, King of the Basement won a
Dora Mavor Moore award, the
highest award in Toronto theatre this
past season. The play was written by
Craig and starred Gil Garratt who
also won a Dora for best actor. The
play will have its U.S. premiere in
2004 and its European premiere in
2005.
But producers tend to think of him
as a playwright for young audiences,
he says, and so it was hard to get
Having Hope at Home produced
after he first wrote it five years ago.
Now the tension surrounding this
first production is if it will be so
popular at Blyth other theatres will
want to produce it.
Craig worries the theme of home
birth might have lost its immediacy
after all these years, what with
midwifery being accepted by the
Ontario government, but a midwife
told him that birthing is becoming
more invasive, not less, with more
caesarean deliveries being done.
Parents are wanting perfect babies
and caesarean deliveries are less
risky to the baby than vaginal births.
The midwife told him some doctors
are suggesting all babies should be
delivered by caesarean.
On the other hand hospitals have
taken giant strides in making birth a
more natural process some even
having birthing rooms that are just
like a bedroom, except there’s a
fully-equipped hospital just across
the hall, he says.
It’s the second main stage
production of a full-length Craig
play (he’s written five) produced at
Blyth with Fires In The Night his
work last seen here in 1988. He has
also written two scripts for the
Young Company, Cue for Treason
and Book of Miracles which have
gone on to have productions
elsewhere.
The cast of Having Hope at Home
will feature many Festival favourites
like Franken, Michelle Fisk,
Caroline Gillies and Ross Manson
but the key role of Carolyn, the
young mother-to-be will be taken on
by Krohnert a bright new performer.
A recent graduate of the National
Theatre School in Montreal, she has
already made a mark in Toronto,
winning a Dora for her role in The
Miracle Worker.
This will be a challenging role,
Craig says. “She’s pregnant the
whole time (on stage). I don’t know
how people will respond to a
massively pregnant woman on stage.
She has to be really charming.”
He’s also interested in seeing the
set design of Andjelija Djuric, an up
and coming designer who also did
the design for Danny, King of the
Basement. It will be fascinating to
see how this young designer with
eastern European roots and a very
conceptual sense of stage design
tackles yet another Huron County
farmhouse, he chuckles.
For this play that deals with the
power of families, Craig will be
surrounded by his own family come
opening night, Aug. 7. Robin, who
is starring as Rachel Lynde in Anne
of Green Gables at the
Charlottetown Festival, had it
written into her contract that the
understudy would fill her role while
she flew back to Ontario to attend
the premiere. In a way, you could
say she’ll be attending the birth of
her husband’s child.
Cbnton
You’ll be inspired,
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