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Feb.27,2005 -Mar.6,2005 |
Memorabilia Inspires Writer
Play recalls WWII experiences for young generation
By Sarah B. Hood
Originally Published: 2005-02-06
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Jeff Miller (left) and Mike McPhaden
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Mike McPhaden already knew he wanted to write a play that had to do with themes of memory when his grandfather died. "I went back to Winnipeg for my grandfather's funeral," says McPhaden, who ended up sifting through a closet full of his grandfather's memorabilia.
"He served in the Air Force, and he kept a fair number of things, like his Morse code book and his air force training manuals. His dying made me realize that this generation is in their seventies and eighties. People who had first-hand experience of the war are disappearing, and so our best window into that time period is closing."
That realization changed McPhaden's approach to the script he was working on, which was to become a play called Poochwater. "I was in the very early stage, so I still knew that I was writing a play about a man with amnesia and I had a lot of images clamouring for attention in my mind, but this experience caused me to set the play in this time period," he says.
"Before long, I realized that one of the major themes of the play is starting over."
Set in 1950, the play opens with a man entering an apartment to return a wallet he has found to a certain Mr. Poochwater. "He leaves Mr. Poochwater a note and realizes he can't sign it. And that's the moment he realizes he has amnesia," says the playwright. "Identity is very important in the play, and there are surprises and twists and turns."
For the character who has amnesia, it's as though his brain's settings have been reset. "And it's 1950; it's at that stage where you must ask - presuming you lived through the war - what do you have to show for it? You basically still have got your whole life ahead of you, so you pull up your bootstraps and find your footing," McPhaden explains.
However, Poochwater is hardly a solemn and serious play. "The show is performed in a gee-whiz, old-movie style, and it's a very stylized approach that takes our nostalgia for the time and plays with it," McPhaden says. "To me, amnesia and nostalgia aren't very far apart." Poochwater has already had two very successful productions in Toronto that won Dora Awards for Outstanding New Play and Outstanding Performance by a Male (for McPhaden, who also stars in the show). This past summer, an English theatre company also mounted a production at the gigantic Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
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