Bluebirds Tonight, and Vimy in 2011

I'm going to see a play that the Peterborough Theatre Guild is putting on tonight called Bluebirds. It's directed by Bea Quarrie, and it made me remember 2011, when she directed a VOS Theatre production of Vimy that I was in.

Same playwright, as it turns out. Vern Thiessen wrote both of them. Bluebirds follows three Canadian nurses, Christy, Maggie and Bab, working in a hospital at Étaples, France in the last year of the First World War. The nickname came from the uniforms, blue dresses and white veils. More than 2,800 of them served in the Canadian Army Medical Corps, and at least 58 of them died.

Vimy was one of those times when you really feel connected to Canadian history, and to the past, and to all the things that people had to go through in that time that we don't really understand. But sometimes theatre can help us do that, and can break down the walls, not only between us, but between the time that things happened and now.

The ward. Three wounded men and a nursing sister, VOS Theatre's Vimy, 2011.

Four of us in the field, with the nurse watching from the back of the stage.

Me as Laurie, with Marlena Sculthorpe as Clare, and the wounded still in their beds behind us.

Look at those photos, though. A book can do the research, and Thiessen clearly did his, and so can a documentary, but neither one puts people in a room with you. We were in the wool and the boots, carrying the rifles, and the audience was close enough to see our faces while we did it.

From the past to the present is this great chasm that gets bigger with every passing day, and anything that can help us get closer to that, and help us to remember things that need to stay in our collective memory, our community memory, is important.

I think this is one of the things that community theatre does well.

I remember on opening night we had a talkback session with Vern Thiessen, who is the playwright for Vimy and also for Bluebirds, and he said something that was really interesting, where the idea of community theatre is that it should be for our communities. I think that's as true now as ever.

The six of us, in 2011:

Clare: Marlena Sculthorpe
Mike: Nic Carreau
Jean-Paul: Rémi Mireault
Will: Derrick Cunningham
Sid: Steve Shortt
Laurie: Joel Varty

Can't wait to see this production. Can't wait to see Bea again. It's been too long.

Bluebirds runs at the Peterborough Theatre Guild on Rogers Street until November 14. Photos above are by Ken Hurford, from VOS Theatre's 2011 production of Vimy.