WAITING FOR THE PARADE

Background Notes 

by Soulpepper Associate Artist Paula Wing

Some plays are born from a chance comment, or a memory. Some - rare, remarkable ones! - spring nearly whole into existence, pouring out of the writer. (At least, so I've heard.) Many plays in Canada are commissioned. A commission can mean one of several circumstances: either a theatre is looking for a play, or a theatre has an idea for a play and is looking for somebody to write it, or a writer has pitched an idea to a theatre and been taken up on it. A commission almost always means two things that are critical to the writing process: money and a deadline. A writer needs the space to write, which funds provide, and a wall to press his or her back against, to get the ball rolling. When Alberta Theatre Projects made John Murrell their Playwright-in-Residence in 1975, they commissioned him to write a Canadian history play. From the crazy open-endedness of that commission, Waiting for the Parade was born.

In his search for material, Murrell elected to interview people in and around Calgary (where ATP is located) who had survived the Second World War. The stories that captured his imagination were told by women, those who had "kept the home fires burning," whose husbands, brothers, sons and fathers had gone off to fight. No bombs fell on Calgary yet these women survived a war just the same. The young writer sensed a story that had not been told, a story he wanted to bring to light and honour.

Murrell has said, "Women are the connective tissue which allows the human race to keep faith that normal life will ultimately return. Women remind us, with wit and resilience, of the great importance of family, and also that family is not everything; of the great importance of patriotism, and also that patriotism is not everything. Their pragmatism is utterly heroic." Through these five fictional characters: Catherine, Margaret, Janet, Eve and Marta, John Murrell explores the secrets, tensions, struggles and quiet unsung heroism he uncovered in suburban kitchens and living rooms out West.

The relationships and difficulties between the characters reflect the war itself. The lives they have known are gone and each woman tests herself against new and prickly realities, in some cases discovering hidden reserves of strength, and in others, grappling with frustration and despair. In a season that has celebrated the panache and the hidden cost of being a flying ace in Billy Bishop Goes to War, and looked satirically at the life of an ordinary soldier in Oh, What a Lovely War, this play provides a bracing and tender look at the supposedly less dramatic, but sometimes equally as challenging role of being the one - or ones - left behind. Not the one saving the world, but the one saving the coupons.

As with those two previously mentioned productions, music is a key component of this theatrical world. The songs and dances of the 1940s surround the action, reminding us of the soldiers far away and temptations closer to home with "Lili Marlene" (a song that was a hit on both sides of the conflict), or of long convivial nights carousing with "Beer Barrel Polka." Music can also separate people: the German lieder Marta listens to arouses not only suspicion but outright hostility, a hostility very few people actually question, despite her long ties to the community.

It turns out there's no safe place in war time. No matter where you are you're ambushed by uncertainty. How do you carry on when you are left alone? How do you respond when you neighbours redefine you as their enemy? What happens to a woman when she cannot respect her husband? How do you preserve a sense of normalcy, or a belief in the future, when everything is unpredictable? How, in the darkest times, do we survive? These questions confront the women of this play, these women who were our mothers and grandmothers. So often that generation minimized their legitimate life experience, brushed aside questions, kept their mouths shut. Thanks to a young writer who asked the right questions, and listened to the answers we have this testament to their human struggle, to their ordinary frailty in extraordinary circumstances. Thanks to him we are privy to some of the ways they coped and endured and how they found comfort, frustration, strength, irritation, and maybe above all connection in each other. How, fully as much as the men they loved and waited for, they came to define themselves differently.

And it is perhaps important to note finally that the play reflects an experience that is still very current. Across Canada today thousands of women keep a home waiting for a husband, father, son or brother who is fighting across the world in Afghanistan. Their problems might seem small in comparison to those facing their men, but they are real enough to warrant our compassion, and more urgently, our attention. As John Murrell proves with this gentle, insightful play, sometimes just listening is the most powerful act of all.

Artist Biography

1945 – John Murrell, future Canadian playwright, is born in Lubbock Texas.

1963-67 – He completes his BFA Degree at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.

1968 – Murrell comes to Canada to get an education degree at the University of Calgary and as of this writing is still here.

1969 – 1974 – He teaches in the Alberta school system, writing plays in his spare time.

1975 – His second play Power in the Blood, about a female evangelist in crisis, wins the University of Alberta's Clifford E. Lee Playwrighting Award. Murrell promptly quits teaching to write full time. In short order he's named Playwright-in-Residence at Alberta Theatre Projects in Calgary.

1977 – On February 4th Waiting for the Parade premières. Produced by ATP at the Canmore Opera House, Heritage Park, Calgary, it's an instant hit and in the next few years is produced around the country, as well as being staged in London and New York. Murrell will later pen a screenplay adaptation (of the Robin Phillips-directed Grand Theatre production) for television. In this same year, his two-hander Memoir, about the final days of Sarah Bernhardt, debuts at the Guelph Spring Festival. This play takes off too, touring to the USA, South America and Japan. It will run for more than three years in Paris in the mid-80s.

1978 – Murrell is an opera buff and a fan of the Italian language, which leads him to translate Machiavelli's Mandragola for Theatre Calgary, followed by Chekhov's Uncle Vanya.

1979 – Parade gets its first Toronto production at the Tarragon and wins a Chalmers Award for Playwrighting. Murrell, who also speaks French, translates Racine's Bajazet for the Tarragon in this same year.

1980 – The Stratford Festival commissions a Murrell translation of Chekhov's The Seagull.

1982 – A new Murrell original, Farther West, premières in Calgary, directed by Robin Phillips and starring Martha Henry. It is the first of many Murrell plays that look at the history of Canada through fictional characters. This one revolves around a prostitute seeking freedom and wins Murrell his second Chalmers Best Play Award.

1983 – His translation of Sardou's Divorçons (Let's Get a Divorce) premières at Theatre Calgary.

1984 – New World, an original play inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest, has its first production in Ottawa at the National Arts Centre. Robin Phillips directs.

1986 – Murrell's mentoring of young writers becomes more formal when he is named head of the Banff Playwrights Colony, a post he will hold until 1989.

1988 – His latest play October focuses again on historical figures, this time the Italian actress Eleonora Duse and the dancer Isadora Duncan. Murrell the arts advocate begins a stint as Head of the Theatre Section at the Canada Council for the Arts, where he will serve until 1992.

1992 – Continuing his penchant for using historical figures for dramatic purposes, Democracy is about a meeting between Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson. It wins a Canadian Authors' Association Best Play Award.

1994 – His play The Faraway Nearby, about Georgia O'Keeffe, wins him a third Chalmers Best Play Award.

1996 – He translates Carole Fréchette's The Four Lives of Marie for the Tarragon.

1998 – One Yellow Rabbit's production of Murrell's new play Death in New Orleans premières at Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre during the International Festival of the Arts. It wins a Fringe Award for Outstanding New Writing - no doubt a very satisfying prize for a writer who's been on the scene for thirty years.

1999 – He becomes Artistic Director and then Executive Producer of Theatre Arts at the Banff Centre. He will step down from the latter position in 2007.

2001 – Murrell does a dramatic adaptation of The Odyssey for the Banff Arts Festival. This adaptation is later produced to great acclaim in Winnipeg by the Manitoba Theatre for Young People.

2003 – John Murrell is appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada and the Alberta Order of Excellence. Not content to rest on his laurels, he writes his first libretto for the opera Filumena, with music composed by John Estacio. The opera is multiply produced in western Canada and garners four Betty Mitchell Awards. 

2004 – Murrell becomes the first ever Canadian playwright to have plays on simultaneously at the Stratford and Shaw Festivals: Waiting for the Parade and a new translation of Jean Cocteau's La Voix Humaine respectively.

2005 – Filumena is remounted in Ottawa and Edmonton in and televised on CBC's Opening Night series.

2007 – His second opera Frobisher, again composed by John Estacio, is seen at the Banff Centre and the Calgary Opera.

2008 – He is honoured with the Governor General's Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award.

2009 – John Murrell, playwright, arts advocate, mentor, translator and teacher continues to live, teach, translate advocate and write in Canada. His plays have been translated into fifteen languages and performed in more than thirty countries. He participates in the 2009 Playwrights Retreat at the Stratford Festival as both mentor and creator.

Tidbits

• John Murrell came to Canada originally in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam War and the resistance at home. Some sources say he chose to come here to avoid the draft.
• Actor Gary Sinise directed Waiting for the Parade at Steppenwolf in Chicago in 1981 with a cast that included Joan Allen and Laurie Metcalf.
• This play was translated into Japanese by T. Yoshihara for Half Moon Theatre in Tokyo in the 1990's.

Fiona Byrne makes her Soulpepper debut this season performing in Waiting for the Parade and A Month in the Country.  She took some time out of rehearsal to talk about her role as Marta in Waiting for the Parade and the empowerment of John Murrell's writing.

Soulpepper: What drew you to this role?

Fiona Byrne: It’s a beautiful play, and it’s an important Canadian piece. When I was offered the part of Marta I was very excited. Her story is really interesting – she is so isolated as a German woman living in Calgary during World War II. Her character is a beautiful look at what it means to be alone, to be a woman, and to feel that you’re at war even though you’re on the home front. That was very much my experience reading the play, and then in rehearsal as well, feeling like Marta is fighting her own battles – the relationship she has with her father is so complicated. I was quite struck by that and very moved by all of their stories.

SP: This is your Soulpepper debut. How does it feel to join the company?

FB: I was so excited! I’ve spent the past 11 seasons at the Shaw Festival, so I’m at home in a repertory company. I’ve always been a big fan of Soulpepper, and being in the city and getting the chance to do Waiting for the Parade and A Month in the Country has been great. Everyone is very welcoming, and I think it’s fantastic to be a part of a company that’s doing new things but also exploring Canadian classics. It’s wonderful.

SP: We often hear stories of war from the perspective of the soldiers. This play, though, focuses on the lives of five women on the home front. Do you feel that this is somewhat of an untold story? One that gives a voice to the experiences of women in wartime?

FB: Yes, I think in many ways it’s a bold choice for John Murrell to have made. He didn’t do the typical thing which is tell the story of five men at war having different experiences, but to turn it on its head and to say that there was a continual battle being fought as people were experiencing huge changes in their lives back at home. Not only did he choose to focus on the women and those who didn’t go to war, but to set the play in Calgary is another really interesting choice. He didn’t choose London or Toronto, he chose Calgary, and we wouldn’t necessarily have expected that. I found the intimacy of that very interesting. I do think it’s a story that needed to be told and wasn’t being explored. Something that I noticed within the characters was that only one of the characters has a husband away – the other three don’t, but still feel the power that this war has over them. I think it’s a very important piece and it still has a lot to tell us.