Station Arts Centre to stage W.O. Mitchell’s Jake and the Kid
The spirit of a well-known prairie writer, the late W.O. Mitchell, will be coming to Station Arts Centre, Rosthern’s stage in July with the Summer Theatre production of “Jake and the Kid”, in the form of Conni Massing’s recent adaptation of Mitchell’s well-known story. Photo by Micheal Keller, courtesy of Orm Mitchell, W.O.’s son.
By Rod Andrews
Station Arts Centre, Rosthern, will revive a classical Canadian theatrical production for its summer theatre program this July.
Diana Domm Smythe, administrator of the centre, has announced this year’s play will be the Conni Massing adaptation of W.O. Mitchell’s Jake and the Kid.
Originally a CBC Radio production that was later turned into a book, Jake and the Kid has been adapted a number of times for the stage, and most recently was produced by Regina’s Globe Theatre last spring.
Domm Smythe said Jake and the Kid will preview at the SAC on July 6, with opening night on July 7.
It will run until July 29, with regular evening performances Tuesdays to Saturdays, with afternoon matinees Wednesdays and Sundays.
Domm Smythe said University of Saskatchewan drama professor Julia Jamison will be directing Jake and the Kid.
Jamison directed Jasper Station, and has been on the Rosthern stage in the past, first performing in concert at a “Classical Cabaret” in 1992 and returning in 1996 to act in Connie Kaldor’s “Dust and Dreams”.
Jamison has an extensive background as an actor, has been involved with musical direction with Globe Theatre and Dancing Sky Theatre and has directed numerous productions in Saskatchewan and Alberta, including The Guardsman at Persephone Theatre.
She has also been a vocal coach, performed in various opera and oratorio presentations across North America and is a teacher, and assistant professor teaching musical theatre at the University of Saskatchewan.
Domm Smythe said while Jamison has a musical background, and worked with last year’s musical director Deborah Buck and assistant musical director Audrey Falk Janzen in bringing the music for Jasper Station, there will be little in the form of a musical this year.
She said casting for the production will start shortly, with a total of six people to appear in a variety of roles in the production.
The cast and summer’s crew will be announced as soon as the auditions have wrapped up.
Domm Smythe was stage manager for Jasper Station last year and has worked on various Station Arts summer theatre productions since 2008.
This year as the arts centre administrator she has taken on a new role.
In her role as publicist for the SAC, with many years of theatre in her past, Domm Smyth said this summer’s production should be an excellent one, well-known already because it is part of Canada’s cultural heritage due to both its radio past and its well-known author.
“It is a multi-generational production that will appeal to audience members of all ages. It is truly good family entertainment,” said Domm Smythe.
For those of you who may not be familiar with Jake and Kid and W.O. Michell, here is a little background about the author and one time one-room school teacher, which was provided to The Saskatchewan Valley News by Orm Mitchell, W.O.’s son.
“W.O. always claimed that his first love was the theatre. His relationship with theatre in Calgary began over 70 years ago when he auditioned for a role in Recipe for Murder, the first play of the Calgary Theatre Guild’s 1936 season. He played a number of roles for the Theatre Guild before moving to Edmonton in 1940.
“In Edmonton, he began writing stories which drew on his childhood experiences on his uncle Jim’s Weyburn farm, and also on his experiences on threshing crews in 1930s Alberta. From that material was born his first Jake and the Kid story. Jake Trumper, the hired man, works for Ma and the Kid on a farm a few miles from Crocus, Saskatchewan.
“Jake, a tall-tale teller, and the Kid, a sensitive 10 year old whose father is fighting overseas, were soon surrounded by an entire community of characters: old Sam Gatenby, a rival to Jake and just as cantankerous; Miss Henchbaw, the stern and proper Rabbit Hill schoolteacher; Mayor MacTaggart, the owner of the town’s general store; Daddy Johnson, the oldest man in Canada; and Repeat Godfrey, the philosophizing barber.? “With the publication of a dozen Jake and the Kid stories in Maclean’s and Liberty, and then the publication of Who Has Seen the Wind in 1947, W.O. became a Canadian literary star. Over the next 45 years he published eight more novels including The Kite, The Vanishing Point, How I Spent My Summer Holidays, and Since Daisy Creek.
“In 1950 W.O. began adapting Jake and the Kid short stories into half hour radio dramas for CBC. The immensely popular Jake and the Kid radio show, which starred John Drainie as Jake and Billie (Mae) Richards as the Kid, ran for six straight years. CBC kept it a closely guarded secret that the Kid was played by a 30 year old woman.
“W.O., with a bit of Jake’s exaggeration, claimed he wrote over 300 Jake scripts. The count is closer to 200, but even that is an amazing output of weekly material. Twice he attempted to drop the series, but CBC listeners urged him to continue. Peter Francis, the first director of the series, said that these scripts place Mitchell “on permanent record as one of the few authentic humourists, better than Leacock and in a class with Mark Twain.” In a way Francis was prophetic–W.O. later won two Leacock awards and became known as ‘Canada’s Mark Twain’.
“W.O. renewed his love affair with theatre, both as a playwright and performer, in the 1960s. In 1967, MAC Theatre mounted the centennial musical Wild Rose (a royal command performance which played in Calgary’s and Edmonton’s Jubilee Auditoriums). Theatre Calgary subsequently produced, under Rick McNair’s watchful and encouraging eye, four more W.O. plays: Back to Beulah (which won the Chalmers Canadian Play Award in 1976), The Black Bonspiel of Willie MacCrimmon (1979), The Kite (1981), and For Those in Peril on the Sea (1982).
“W.O.’s reading performance career was launched in 1965 when he gave a one-man show as a benefit to raise funds for Calgary’s MAC Theatre. The Calgary Herald reported that Mitchell “enthralled” his sellout audience with “hilarious descriptions of human situations.”
“W.O. claimed that one of his stories that evening, a recollection of selling lingerie in a prairie whorehouse when he was 10 years old, made a woman laugh so hard that two ushers had to help her to the ladies’ washroom. He subsequently did a number of annual benefits for Theatre Calgary. His 1981 performance held in Calgary’s Jubilee Auditorium was attended by over 1,000 people. The washrooms must have been particularly busy that night.
“W.O. always thought of his readers and theatre audiences as “creative partners” in the telling of his stories, and he particularly loved the presence of a live audience.
“During a performance at “An Evening with W.O. Mitchell”, Orm said his dad wrote about the thrill and magic of the theatre, which, stated “later on in my career, I discovered another way to help dilute the writer’s darkness [of private and lonely writing]–reading performances. My one-man shows over the years have given me what all stage performers love–the immediate thrust of a live audience as it responds to story magic,” said W.O. Mitchell.
Orm said that the first production of what will be staged this summer is from an earlier adaptation of a play called “The Day Jake Made Her Rain”. This show was performed in Qu’Appelle in August 1953.
“It was more than the audience that responded to story magic. The area was in the midst of a two-month drought, but right on cue, following Jake’s rainmaking exhortation, a tremendous thunderstorm hit. The theatre’s sound effects for thunder and lightning were redundant; rain came down in torrents as the audience left the theatre,” is what W.O. himself wrote about that show.
Domm Smythe said tickets for the summer theatre production of Jake and Kid will go on sale later this spring.
She said those who wish to make reservations or have any other questions can contact the Station Arts Centre at (306) 232-5332 or email sac.rosthern@sasktel.net.
In addition to the show, she said the Kathy Thiessen Art Gallery will have a display of prairie artwork and the tearoom will have pre-show dinners, which will also reflect a prairie theme.
