Category: Shatter

Trina Davies will be part of the Talk-Back night for Shatter following the performance on Wednesday, December 15th. Trina’s work is being seen around Edmonton quite a bit this season. In addition to Shatter here at Walterdale Theatre, Waxworks was recently presented by Concordia University at Theatre at CUE and The Romeo Initiative will be presented in March 2018 as part of the Skirts AFire Festival. 

Trina Davies

Formerly of Edmonton, Trina is a playwright based in Vancouver Canada. Her award-winning plays include Multi User Dungeon, Shatter, The Bone Bridge, The Auction and Waxworks. Her last published play The Romeo Initiative was a finalist for Canada’s top literary prize, the Governor General’s Award for Dramatic Literature, and won the National Enbridge Award for Established Artist. Her plays have been performed across Canada and in a number of other countries including the United States, Germany, Italy, and India. Shatter premiered Off-Broadway in 2014 to audience and critical acclaim. Her play The Bone Bridge, developed by the Citadel Theatre and with support from the BC Arts Council, recently won the 2017 Woodward International Playwriting Prize in the U.S.

She has participated in artist residencies at the Stratford Festival, the Banff International Centre for the Arts, the Playwrights Theatre Centre, the Citadel Playwright’s Forum, and the Bella Vita Playwrights Retreat in Tuscany, Italy. Trina is a member of the Alberta Playwrights Network, the Playwrights Theatre Centre and the Playwrights Guild of Canada.

She is currently working Silence: Mabel and Alexander Graham Bell, a love story exploring what constitutes real communication. Silence will receive its world premiere directed by Peter Hinton at The Grand Theatre, London Ontario in January 2018. Also watch for The Romeo Initiative, coming to the Edmonton Skirts Afire Festival in March 2018.

For more information on Trina and her work, visit www.trinadavies.com

Shatter: Playwright’ s Notes

Shatter began with an image: an unbroken pane of glass after the largest man-made explosion of the world. That image led me to several years of research. During that research something else happened. 9/11. I watched, as the rest of the world did, in terror and fascination as I waited to find out what this event meant for all of us. I sat glued to the images that are now iconic, fearful of what action would be taken next. I listened to the interviews that day as various news-worthy individuals trotted out competing theories about who was responsible. In the weeks following I heard whispers of backlash attacks in the U.S. and elsewhere; and accessed reports from human rights organizations detailing the hate crimes that were being committed. The same thing happened after the Oklahoma City bombing. The same thing happened after the 1923 earthquake in Japan. The same thing happened after the Halifax Explosion. As I was processing the events of our current world, I came across a reference to hate crimes against Germans living in Halifax. The official history books say little. Digging into the actual newspapers of the day I came across a much different story. Shatter is the story of a family and of a community, both living through an unimaginable tragedy and trying to come out whole on the other side. Fear is the enemy.

Historical Notes

The Halifax Explosion of 1917 was the largest man-made explosion in the world prior to Hiroshima. The 1917 Explosion was studied by makers of the Hiroshima bomb. In a booming war-time city of 50,000, 2,000 people were killed, 9,000 were wounded and many were homeless. At least 300 people were blinded in one or both eyes. The Explosion happened because two ships – one a Belgian Relief ship known as the Imo, and the other a French munitions ship known as the Mont Blanc – collided in the narrows of the Halifax Harbour. The collision caused sparks that ignited flammables on the deck of the Mont Blanc. Not understanding that the Mont Blanc was carrying munitions, many Haligonians ran down to the docks to see the excitement of the fire. Those closest to the blast were incinerated. The Explosion was officially ruled an accident after many legal hearings, but that did not stop the community from trying to affix blame. The newspapers fired the flames of wartime hatred, and incited the locals to target those in the community of German birth.

What is your role in this production? My role is the character Elsie Schultz, a German immigrant to Canada. Elsie is a widow and is best friends with Jennie McLean. She also has a close relationship with Jennie’s two children. Elsie is optimistic and strong however her German background and hidden struggle become problematic in the face of the war and the devastating Halifax explosion. Learning the role of Elsie has been a challenge, as she has a German accent and some of her lines are in German!

What is your background in theatre? At Walterdale? I was involved in theatre in high school, and I’ve done some acting in educational videos for Alberta Health Services. I’ve taken courses at the Foote Theatre, I’m involved with Actor’s Gym, and I’m also studying singing. I’ve done one show previously with the Walterdale, Portrait of a Family Dinner in May 2017. I was recently hired as a confederate actor for the AHS eSim program, which will be a fantastic way to combine my nursing background with acting!

What brought you out for this show? I had so much fun with the Portrait of a Family Dinner production that I couldn’t wait to get involved in another show! It was a lovely surprise to be cast as Elsie.

What do you think audiences will take away from this show? Why should they come and see it? I think that the audience will find the characters compelling and that they will enjoy our director Josh Languedoc’s inspired vision for this production. There will be a little bit of a Canadian history lesson as well, and the similarities to some of today’s societal issues are…unsettling, to say the least.

Shatter deals with a major event in Canadian history that Canadians today might not know too much about. Are there any other major events in Canadian history that you feel we should know more about that we do? The discovery of insulin in 1922 by Sir Frederick Banting and his assistant, Charles Best, is perhaps the most well-known and widely celebrated medical breakthrough in Canadian history. Although insulin is not a cure for diabetes, its availability has made it possible for people with diabetes to manage their condition and enjoy a longer life expectancy than they would have in Banting’s era. For his contribution to the medical community, Banting was awarded Canada’s first Nobel Prize. My grandfather developed diabetes as a young man and was one of the first Albertans to use insulin. He lived to the age of 76. He also survived a serious case of encephalitis as a 10 year old, caused by the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918!

What is your role in this production? I am playing a Shadow in Shatter. Basically, the shadows are six people who represent the different points of view, types of people and stories of the people who would have been affected by the Halifax explosion. I am playing an child/ orphan character, so I represent all of the children who were left without their families after the explosion. The naivety of a child is important to recognize because the mind of a child can be swayed easily, which is one of the main focuses of Shatter.

What is your background in theatre? At Walterdale? Almost all of my theatrical training comes from High school/ school theatre! I go to Archbishop Jordan Catholic High school where we have an incredible fine arts program. I have been a costume designer for two shows at my school and have worked on about five shows in total there, mostly as a technical theatre member. This is my first community theatre show since I was in The Wizard of Oz at Festival Place (Sherwood Park) when I was around 11-years-old. I am so happy to be expanding my knowledge and learning about theatre because it is something that I’d like to pursue for my future. I have never done any other shows at the Walterdale but I have loved working there!

What brought you out for this show? I heard about auditions for Shatter through our director, Josh Languedoc, who I know from The Wizard of Oz where he played the Cowardly Lion. I was looking for auditions outside of school and I saw this audition, which was open for everyone; no matter what age or how much experience. I was just so excited to be out auditioning for the show, so, when I heard that I was cast, I was absolutely ecstatic!

What do you think audiences will take away from this show? Why should they come and see it? Personally, I think that the audience will take away a new awareness from the show. Shatter reveals how those around you can affect your decision making and beliefs and also how the media can influence your thoughts and actions. I hope that people will learn to question or research all of the different opinions that they hear about everything they see around them and I also hope that they can learn to be informed about everything that they read, hear or see.

Shatter deals with a major event in Canadian history that Canadians today might not know too much about. Are there any other major events in Canadian history that you feel we should know more about than we do? 

I think that Canadians should educate themselves more about Residential Schools and the effect that they have had on the past, and the future, of our Canada. I know that a lot of people recognize the impact that Residential Schools have had, but I don’t think that everyone realizes the impact they still have. There are still familial and cultural ties within First Nations people that have been cut because of the mistreatment in Residential Schools, and I think it would be great if there was more awareness about this very current situation.