Two startling Canadian plays, both based on real-life events.
The Drowning Girls is a chilling ghost story based on the true-life ‘Brides in the Bath’ murders of the early 20th century.
Bessie, Alice, and Margaret have two things in common: they are married to George Joseph Smith, and they are dead. Surfacing from the bathtubs they were drowned in, the three breathless brides gather evidence against their womanizing, murderous husband by reliving the shocking events leading up to their deaths.
Reflecting on the misconceptions of love, married life, and the not-so-happily ever after, The Drowning Girls is both a breathtaking fantasia and a social critique, full of rich images, a myriad of characters, and lyrical language.
Beth Graham, Charlie Tomlinson and Daniela Vaskalic’s play was first staged at the 2008 Alberta Theatre Projects Playwrites Festival, and won the 2008 Betty Mitchell Award for Outstanding New Play.
In Comrades by Beth Graham and Daniela Vlaskalic, two Italian immigrants suffer an infamous miscarriage of justice in the so-called Land of the Free.
When Bartolomeo Vanzetti and Nicola Sacco left their small Italian villages to embark on a long voyage to the United States, they couldn’t have imagined the world they were going to meet. Controversially imprisoned for murder, both men must fight for their lives amidst discrimination and public humiliation.
Comrades brings to life Sacco and Vanzetti’s seven-year imprisonment and explores the struggles and agonies of two men, tried not for what they did, but for who they were.
The play was premiered at the 2000 Edmonton Fringe Festival.
Betty Mitchell Award for Outstanding New Play
