Rosebud students perform piece of little-known Canadian history

By Laureen F. Guenther Times Contributor

Rosebud School of the Arts students will tell a nearly-forgotten part of Canada’s history when they perform the play Unity (1918), opening April 5 on the BMO Studio Stage in Rosebud.
Unity (1918), by Canadian playwright Kevin Kerr, is a story of what might have happened in the real Saskatchewan town of Unity, when the Spanish Flu arrived in November 1918. The disease took more lives in four weeks than the First World War had taken in all four years. And the flu targeted young people first.
“This play is a fictional take on what some of those young people may have been like when they were just on the cusp of adulthood and ready to taste their aspirations of their purpose in life, their connection to others, both at large in the community,” said director Jeany Van Meltebeke.
“There is the grief of the loss of friend and fiancé and spouse, and a community that is grappling with… the germs coming. Nobody quite knew how it was carried. Does it get carried on the wind? Is it the soldiers coming home? Is it the trains?
“Eventually it’s mandated that everybody has to wear a mask,” she said. “You can’t touch, you can’t spit, you can’t kiss. And yet here are these people longing for intimacy and connection.”
Yet in all of the fear and loss, she said, the play makes you eager to get on with living and to taste all it has to offer.
A young woman named Beatrice, played by Renee Cyr, tells the audience her story. “You hear about her longing for a returning soldier who she wants to marry, and her hopes for the future.”
Cissy, Beatrice’s reckless, impassioned sister, is played by Holly Langmead. Hart, a blind returning soldier, is played by Chris Friesen. Rachel Franson plays Sunna, a young woman who takes over the undertaker duties after her uncle dies.
The other community members, whom we’ll “really come to care about,” are played by the other students of Rosebud School of the Arts’ second-year class, who are also building the set, and arranging props, costumes and lights.
“(Playwright) Kevin Kerr has such a great love for people and his characters, while never letting it get too sentimental,” Van Meltebeke said. “So as soon as it starts to get too sweet or too resolved, it’s like he pulls the rug out from under it and something odd, awful or funny happens.”
Unity (1918) is a full-length, two-act play with intermission. It opens April 5 and runs Thursdays to Saturdays at 4:30 p.m. (except Good Friday) until April 27. For tickets, go to rosebudschoolofthearts.com and click on the link for the Rosebud Theatre box office. To purchase a theatre-and-dinner combination ticket, call 1-800-267-7553.
“For a play set 100 years ago, it’s uncomfortably and refreshingly relevant.”