The Power of a Play

When we pay attention to little things, a universal energy flows through our present, magnifying the meaning of events.

- Alexandra Stoddard, Tea Celebrations

In November 2009, I gave a presentation at the Alexandra Writer’s Centre in Calgary about my experience of writing A Widow’s Awakening. After I had finished speaking, a Greek man by the name of Andy asked me to explain in more detail about the ‘awakening’ process because “so many people,” he said, “seem to be sound asleep.”

I paused a moment before answering, trying to think of the best words to better articulate my perspective on the concept.

“The day after John died,” I finally said, “I remember noticing how slowly my parents seemed to be speaking to me. In fact, right from the moment I was told John fell, it felt like I was functioning on a different level than everyone else…almost as if the shock of John’s death had launched me into a heightened state of awareness.”

Andy nodded so I continued. “I remember being really irritated with people in those first few days. It was as if my soul inherently understood the significance of John’s death, while everyone else around me seemed kinda stunned. And it became clear to me very quickly that I had to write a book about the experience.”

“So do you think people need a tragedy, or something really significant, to happen to wake them up to the importance of pursuing their dreams?” he asked.

“No. I think there are plenty of people living their dreams simply because they chose to do so and then took the necessary steps to achieve their goals – rather than being forced to do so after experiencing some sort of tremendous loss, tragedy or life-altering event.”

Andy shook his head. “I don’t agree. I think most people do need a pretty loud wake-up call. It just seems to me that the vast majority of people are so asleep that they aren’t paying attention to what’s going on around them…or in them.”

In hindsight, I can hear the angels laughing. For the very next day I got a powerful wake-up call that hurt like the dickens…but it wasn’t in the form of a tragedy. At least, not a real one.

It was a play.

I’m really starting to suspect that the universe communicates to us through the mediums that will have the best chance of catching our attention. As a playwright and lover of the theatre, it makes sense that it would be a play that instigated a major life decision.

It’s kind of like listening to the radio…we tend to listen to certain stations, so although we may flip between two or three different ones, the universe likely won’t send us an important news bulletin on a station we never listen to.

At any rate, the play was called I, Claudia by Kristen Thomson and it was about a twelve year old girl hiding out in the boiler room of her junior high. It was a one-act, one-woman play where the actress played four different characters: twelve year old Claudia whose parents were recently divorced, the school janitor, Claudia’s grandpa and her dad’s new wife, Leslie.

The actress playing the four characters put on different masks and outfits and changed her voice and behaviour to convey which character she was at any given moment. Isn’t THAT a metaphor for how we often live our lives?!

About two thirds of the way through the play, twelve year old Claudia was so distraught that she was now screaming at us – the audience – about her horrible experience over the weekend of having to go to her dad’s wedding. She had a ruler in her hand and was waving it at us as she got angrier and angrier explaining the humiliation of having to wear this God-awful dress with a huge bow on her bum.

I howled with laughter at this image. But something didn’t feel quite right. I mean, although I was laughing out loud, it felt as if a whole bunch of emotion was…stuck behind my eyes.

Then Claudia went on to say, through tears, how FURIOUS she is at her dad for leaving their family and how lonely her mother would be now and how she wouldn’t get to see her dad very much anymore and how he obviously didn’t care about her feelings…

I wasn’t laughing anymore. I was bawling – and barely stopped for two days.

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us

– Franz Kafka

In my case, the axe was I, Claudia.

When the play ended, you could have heard a pin drop in that theatre. I wasn’t the only one impacted. I turned to my mom in the seat beside me. She took one look at the tears streaming down my face and freaked out.

“Oh my God! What have I done? Look how hurt you still are over the divorce! What could I have done better? That goddamn father of yours!”

“Mom,” I said, “let’s go get something to eat.”

My parents divorced when I was six. My dad remarried a couple of years later. The catch was how he told me the news: he picked me up one day and casually announced, over his shoulder to me in the back seat, that he’d got married over the weekend.

Thanks for the invite.

“You cried for days,” my mom told me over dinner after the play. “You were so upset that my boss sent me home from work to take care of you.”

I didn’t remember that.

I do know that my dad didn’t intend to hurt me. He just made the best decision he could at the time. But looking back on the incident now, I think the best word to describe his behaviour is…indifference. And I guess I’d buried the pain resulting from that indifference until an annoyingly effective play brought it to the surface.

After dinner, I went home and cried some more. Although my dad lived with me at the time, he happened to be away that week – which was probably a good thing.

The next morning, I woke up feeling significantly better about that matter. But then I proceeded to start crying again.

“Oh for God’s sakes,” I snapped at the fireplace, “now what’s the problem?”

And in my imagination, I heard a tiny voice whisper, “You can move on now.”

“WHAT?” I snapped.

“IT’S TIME TO MOVE ON!” the voice in my head yelled, tired of the gentle approach. “YOU ARE DONE HERE. YOU HAVE DEALT WITH ALL YOU NEEDED TO DEAL WITH IN CALGARY AND NOW YOU CAN GET ON WITH YOUR LIFE.”

I looked around my familiar living room with fresh eyes. Why am I still living in the same neighbourhood I grew up in? In the same house that John and I bought? I am a 41 year old widow living with my father. Is this what I signed up for?

For the short term, yes…but now that chapter was coming to a close.

My dad had moved in three years ago and had been a tremendous help to me with my home, yard and dogs during a period when I had an awful lot of other demands on my time. As I continued to cry my way through that Sunday morning, I realized that, even though it had taken my dad thirty-five years to come back to me, in his own way, he did…when I needed him most.

Wow.

I guess dislodging all this childhood stuff must have made room for a buried dream to bubble to the surface because my next thought wasn’t about the past. It was about my future. And, for the first time since Saturday afternoon, I smiled.

A couple of hours later, I called my mom. “I’m moving to the coast,” I said. “At long last, I’m gonna be a writer by the sea.”

“What?!”

I told her the details I’d worked out so far, including selling my home in the spring.

“Why don’t you just rent it out,” she suggested. “In case you change my mind.”

“Because John’s dead and he’s not coming back,” I heard myself say. “And because this is a house for a family and I’m obviously not having one. So why would I want to keep the door open to a life that was slammed shut nearly a decade ago?”

Silence. Then, my mom said softly, “You’re right.”

“I know I am.”

“What about your dad?” she asked. “Where will he go?”

“He’ll be fine,” I assured her. “We’ll find him a new place to live.”

Three months later, my dad moved into his own digs, happy as a clam to be on his own again. Three months after that, I moved to a bungalow on Vancouver Island where I write by the sea.

All because of a play.

Maryanne Pope is a playwright, screenwriter and the author of A Widow’s Awakening. She is the CEO of Pink Gazelle Productions Inc and the Board Chair of the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund. Please visit www.pinkgazelle.com or www.jpmf.ca for details.

The Knife

Calgary, AB, Feb 2010

“Can I speak to you a sec, Maryanne?”

“Sure,” I say.

He nods. “Come with me.”

I glance at my watch. The press conference will begin in ten minutes. But Darren knows this, so I follow him out of the police headquarters media room and down a hallway into his office. Inside, he sits at his desk, opens a drawer and reaches inside. He rummages around, pulls something out and then turns to look at me.

“I’ve been waiting for the right time to give you this,” he says. “And I think today is it.”

Today is the Calgary press conference launching the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund’s latest safety initiative, Put Yourself in Our Boots. Darren is the K-9 officer who went into the warehouse with John the night he died nearly ten years ago. Darren had stayed on the ground level with his dog while John went up to the mezzanine to investigate, which is where he stepped through the unmarked false ceiling and fell to his death.

Darren hands me a police-issue knife with a blade that springs open. I take it. My stomach tightens…partly because I strongly suspect the origin of the knife and partly because the press conference will start in seven minutes – and I’m the spokesperson.

“That’s the knife I used to cut John’s uniform after I found him in the lunchroom,” Darren says. “I had to rip his shirt open so I could determine the source of his injuries and give him CPR.”

I nod, holding my breath.

“The weird thing,” he continues, “is that I dropped the knife in the snow a few years back and couldn’t find it. But I kept going back to where I knew I’d lost it and then one time my dog, Gino, found it.”

Gino was the dog working with Darren the night John fell.

“I hope its okay I’m giving it to you now,” Darren says. “It’s just that…I think it’s time.”

I smile. “I think so, too. Thank you.”

We walk back to the media room together. I go straight to the podium and begin the press conference. My nervousness is gone.

Afterward, I head up to Edmonton for our press conference there the next day. And on the drive, I get to thinking…

Darren gave me the knife that had led him to get John’s breathing going again. And that action had led to John being put on life support, which meant that a) I – and our friends and family – were able to spend the day with him as he passed away versus saying goodbye to a corpse and; b) John was able to donate four organs, including his heart to a fifty-three year old man.

One moment, the knife had been an inert tool on Darren’s belt. The next moment – when used – it significantly impacted dozens of lives.

In playing ball, and in life, a person occasionally gets the opportunity to do something great. When that time comes, only two things matter: 1) recognizing the opportunity and 2) having the courage to take that swing. – Hank Aaron

Both Darren and John had been trained by Brian Willis, a former police officer and now an international trainer of emergency responders. In one of Brian’s seminars, he spoke of a dangerous state of mind known as “Code Black.”

Code Black is when someone finds themselves in a threatening environment they have never been in before – and there has been no previous experience, training or conditioning the mind can recall that will direct the person on how best to respond. If Code Black occurs, look out.

Police officers are trained so that they are mentally prepared to handle a traumatic event, regardless of the specific circumstances. So when Darren found John – unconscious and bleeding on the lunchroom floor – he knew exactly what to do…and did it.

When John’s Sergeant picked me up at work the day John fell and drove me to the hospital to see him, I, too, found myself in an unfamiliar and threatening situation, in that my entire life was collapsing around me. And yet, I remember having the distinct sensation that something I always knew was going to happen had just…begun. I hadn’t been trained or mentally conditioned to cope with seeing John dying of a brain injury – but I didn’t go into Code Black the day he died.

Sure, I went off the deep end a few weeks later when my mind decided it would no longer accept a reality that had become too painful. But during those first few hours when it became clear that John was going to succumb to his injuries, I wonder if, in a way, I pulled out a few ‘knives’ of my own from my toolbelt – inner strength, acceptance, faith, and an intuitive understanding that one day things would get better – to survive.

If so, then perhaps Darren’s knife is a metaphor for the tools – the strengths, skills, talents, passions and dreams – we already have within us. Maybe our job is to recognize the opportunities when they come along and then find the courage to take that swing.

Maryanne Pope is the Board Chair of the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund , the author of A Widow’s Awakening and an executive producer of the Put Yourself in Our Boots safety campaign. Please visit www.jpmf.ca or www.ourboots.ca for details.

Over the past four years, Maryanne Pope of Pink Gazelle Productions Inc has been writing the screenplay for the future feature film, God’s Country; the Nell Shipman Story and the screenplay for a related short film, entitled C’s Trial.

The Nell Shipman screenplay is based on Shipman’s autobiography, The Silent Screen and my Talking Heart. Nell Shipman was a Canadian-born silent screen star, writer, director and producer. She had her own production company and was an early animal rights activist and environmentalist who advocated, through her films, the importance of people working in harmony with nature versus exploiting it.

In 1919, Nell starred in one of Canada’s highest ever grossing films entitled Back to God’s Country, which was shot in Northern Alberta.

Inspired by Andrew Nikiforuk’s book, Tar Sands; Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, the C’s Trial film will be a satire about the massive oil sands development in Northern Alberta. Here’s the synopsis: when a local woman with a passion for polar bears and a penchant for Kafka orchestrates the arrest of a government representative, oil executive and public relations expert and puts them on trial in a mock courtroom, the truth comes out as quick as…tar.

Maryanne has been working in close collaboration with Nell Shipman’s granddaughter, Nina Bremer, regarding rights, permissions, content, vision, structure and the link to C’s Trial – which sets Nell Shipman’s valuable story within a contemporary context.

The underlying question driving both films pertains to both local and global environmental concerns: what are we doing to God’s Country?

Both scripts are now nearing completion and the pre-production phase of securing funding and creative talent will begin in the fall of 2010.

“Being in a sense so alone with the animals…serving them and maintaining the soft-spoken image which arrived punctually with their food made communication between us a natural and easy thing. And with this treasured silent monologue, I was also acquiring a closer spoken relationship with my fellow humans.” – Nell Shipman, The Silent Screen and My Talking Heart

Maryanne Pope is the Founder & CEO of Pink Gazelle Productions Inc and the author of A Widow’s Awakening. Maryanne also writes screenplays, play scripts, short stories, essays and articles.

Right on Time

By Maryanne Pope

“Timing,” as the old saying goes, “is everything.” However, what I’m discovering is that trying to get the timing right is often beyond our control – and what sometimes seems like really lousy timing is, in retrospect, right on the mark.

When my dog, Sable, went blind 10 days before I moved from Calgary to Victoria, at first I thought it was horrible timing because not only was it extremely inconvenient to pack up one’s home while caring for an aging deaf and blind dog, it also meant that I would be taking her out of her familiar surroundings.

First would be the four day car trip with three different motels. Then we’d be living in a basement suite at a friend’s place in Victoria for six weeks, at which time they would be moving to a new home – without a rental suite. So then, after those six weeks, Sable, Soda (my other dog) and I would have to move again.

This meant that, upon arrival in Victoria, I would have six weeks to either find new digs to rent that would accept two German Shepherds and be suitable for a blind dog – as in a fenced yard and no stairs – or buy my own place.

When my friends in Victoria first told me of their change in plans to sell their home with the rental suite, I must confess my stress level went up a notch…and I found that out when Sable still had her sight. So when she went blind, I REALLY started to worry about where the heck the three of us would live, come the end of June.

But I did have six weeks to look. Not.

The day after I arrived in Victoria, Sable started crying and pacing. I rushed her to emergency. Her eye pressure had spiked again; the drops were no longer working. Four days later, out came that second eye.

Now, caring for a large elderly blind dog is one thing. Caring for a large elderly blind dog after major surgery is quite another. In the week following her surgery, I knew I wouldn’t be able leave her alone at home for very long nor could I take her in the car with me. This would make looking for a new place to live rather difficult, which pretty much left the four days between me finding out her eye pressure had gone through the roof – and her surgery.

Sure enough, it was during this grace period that I was driving down a street in Sidney when I saw a sign for an open house. I had my friends’ kids in the car and one of them went in with me. The realtor showed us around and when she took us through the kitchen and into the sunroom addition, my mouth fell open. It was perfect for my office! Two days later, I put in an offer.

From a timing perspective, it is only in hindsight that all this makes sense.

The temporary basement suite turned out to be an ideal place for Sable to heal because a) there were no stairs and it was a small, manageable space; b) I had three little girls helping me care for her and; c) she had my full attention because the big move from Calgary was done and we had our new place lined up.

When I started thinking about this move in the bigger picture, I realized just how incredibly good the timing was. My home in Calgary was a four level split…that’s at least twenty stairs. Now that Sable can’t see, she doesn’t do stairs anymore! If I were still in Calgary, she’d either be alone every night or I would be sleeping in the living room.

Plus, if I didn’t have an imposed six-week timeline to find a place to live, I wouldn’t have been looking very hard – and therefore probably wouldn’t have found my new home.

Speaking of which, it was on June 29^th – nine years and nine months to the day that my husband, John, died – that I moved into my new pad. And get this: the movers had just finished bringing all the furniture and boxes into the house. Then they walked out the front door and I walked out the back. I stood there a moment, in the middle of the yard, looking around and smiling. Then I looked up and said a ‘thank you’ to whoever might be listening – and then went back inside the sunroom where all my office boxes were now stacked. And there, sitting on top of one of the file boxes was John’s old Timex.

No way.

The only rational explanation I can come up with is that when one of the movers was carrying a Bankers box, it was tilted and John’s watch fell out of the hole where the handle is. If so, it’s strange that no one said anything to me about finding it. And I certainly hadn’t started any unpacking yet.

I picked up the watch and smiled…and in my heart, I heard John say, “Right on time, Pope.”

Maryanne Pope is an author, screenwriter and playwright. She is the author of A Widow’s Awakening and the executive producer of the Whatever Floats Your Boat…Perspectives on Motherhood documentary. She is the founder & CEO of Pink Gazelle Productions Inc and the Board Chair of the John Petropoulos Memorial Fund.