Rosebud’s Quilters tells stories of prairie women’s lives

Times Contributor 

 

Rosebud School of the Arts opened this spring’s student production, Quilters, April 12.

Elderly Sarah (Renita Hamm) tells us she’s made many quilts in her lifetime. Now she plans to make her last one – a legacy quilt. Quilt squares are created and stitched, each one telling a piece of Sarah’s life or the life of her grandmother, mother, sister, daughter, niece, friend.

This “play with music” begins softly, building to a musical and emotional crescendo. It begins so softly, in fact, I briefly thought I’d be bored. I soon got over that, watching a seven-year-old girl in a dug-out home (Jesse Lynn Anderson) weep over the younger sister (Jenny Daigle) who has just died in her lap. Sarah’s stories aren’t all sad; she also sews playfulness and celebration, delight and laughter and romance into her quilt. But from that point on – until Sarah’s stories are all told and her quilt pieces are sewn – I was fully engaged.

I’d love to see Quilters again, even just to hear the music, a poignant mix of traditional and new melodies. 

“It’s hard music. It’s really challenging (to sing),” says Renita Hamm. “But (the students) sure proved up to the task.” 

Chills ran through me when the ten-woman cast closed in seven-part harmony: “All our sorrow will end, and our voices will blend … with the loved ones who’ve gone on before … never grow old, In a land where we’ll never grow old…”

Director Deanne Bertsch is thankful Renita Hamm, Rosebud’s Student Life Advisor, joined the cast. 

“That was so important to me.” Bertsch says. “With all these young women, we had a woman (playing Sarah) who could actually have been their mother … Renita is … (a young) matriarchal figure in Rosebud. She fits the role so perfectly.”

“Sarah’s character is so lovely,” Hamm says. “(She) has so much important stuff to say.” 

Because Bertsch “created lots of time for (relational) connections to be made,” within the cast, Hamm says, it was “easy to imagine (the students) as my daughters and my sisters and my mother, and my grandchildren.”

Bertsch says Quilters audiences will take away a reminder that “as human beings we need to leave something behind … why do we want to pass our stories down? Is it to prove we existed? Is it to pass meaning to our children? We all have our ways of leaving our marks. I hopefully leave my shows. Renita leaves so many different things! I think it is about passing down our stories.”

“The play has tremendous value in terms of honouring women and telling a story and … settling this land,” Hamm says. “I resonate very much to the prairie women because my grandparents were first-generation Canadians. They made it work and they thrived.”

The play speaks to Hamm of the resilience of the human spirit. 

“Sometimes you don’t (get to) make choices, but…the way you put things together is really all you’ve got … we can put things together beautifully if we choose.”

Quilters runs on Rosebud’s Studio Stage until April 27. Call 1-800-267-7553 for tickets.