Deserters: the alternate reality of Kenneth T. Williams’ new play, at U of A Studio Theatre. A preview

“They get to do the fun stuff!” says Kenneth T. Williams of the sparky characters, all female, in his new play, getting its world premiere Thursday at the U of A’s Studio Theatre.

In Deserters, says the exuberant Cree playwright, “they get to fight, they get they get to be raunchy, they get to be sexual, they get to be rowdy…. I’m not re-writing the female identity, but I wanted to give the girls the chance to do all the rough stuff the guys always get to do!”

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When does that ever happen in theatre? As Williams points out, Hedda Gabler and Nora get to step out of line, but they’re just one, “and they’re surrounded by men…. “Imagine a room full of Hedda’s and Nora’s!” He laughs. In Deserters he’s made a point of expanding the rowdiness circle: “it’s the whole group who gets in on it, and has their elbows up, so to speak.”

And there’s this: Williams wrote Deserters specially for the U of A’s graduating BFA acting class, 12 actors strong, a cast “evenly split by gender identity….” In the production directed by Carmen Aguirre, “we’re not trying to feminize the boys; we’re getting them to bring themselves to the roles … the way we’ve asked women to do when we do retro-fitted Shakespeare.”

“And we get to have this without it being a Big Subject Matter,” as he puts it. “You know the way a woman playing Hamlet always turns into a headline, right?” The gender-fluid casting of Deserters isn’t like that, much to Williams’s delight.

Playwright Kenneth T. Williams. Photo supplied.

Originally from Gordon First Nation in Saskatchewan, Williams is an associate professor in the U of A drama department where, in 1992, he became the first Indigenous grad of the Master’s playwriting program). And being at the university, he says, “has allowed me to experiment, not constrained by the usual restraints of Canadian playwriting” where four actors counts as a Size Large cast. It’s a challenge, yes, and a luxury to have a dozen actors. “And since they’ve been together for four years, they know each other well enough to have short-cuts,” and be a bona fide ensemble.

Williams’ route into a premium playwright’s career was circuitous, via the scenic life-experience back road: freelance journalist, rock band drummer, bartender, soldier, door-to-door encyclopedia salesman, First Nations land claims researcher came first. Thunderstick was his breakthrough play, the story of two fractious cousins, the one a hell-raiser and the other a frontline wartime photographer, and both living with a toxic residential school inheritance. In the 2010 Theatre Network production, Claude Lauzon of Royal Canadian Air Farce and Lorne Cardinal of Corner Gas switches roles every night. Cafe Daughter, Bannock Republic, Three Little Birds have been produced on stages across the country. The Herd, an Indigenous version of the purism vs commercial pressures raised in Ibsen’s Enemy of the People, was at the Citadel in 2022.

Deserters comes with its own history — a veritable play in itself as the wry Williams (who’s got to be one of the most engaging conversationalists in Canadian theatre) describes. Its origins are the inaugural 2006 edition of ’10 Days of Madness’, a 24-hour playwriting competition launched at the U of A Bookstore. “Back then, it was for four actors,” he says. The idea of civil war was a way into expressing the residential school experience, “in a way that didn’t actual say ‘residential school’, with that experiential baggage.”

“I wanted to create it as an alternate reality, and I came up with the idea of people forced to fight a holy war they didn’t want to fight, conscripted on various sides of belief, and thrown together in a civil war.” The idea, he says, “to give people an understanding of my family’s experience of residential school history — in a sci-fi kind of way.”

“That’s how the whole thing started. And a little bit of that still exists in the play,” he says of the “tiny little world, set in the cell of a military prisoner camp…. Then people kept asking me more about the world. Who are these people? What does the alternative reality look like?  What does the country look like? Where are the police?”

“I kept building it up. But after many years and one almost-production at (Toronto’s) Native Earth Performing Arts, I stopped working it…. OK, so it’s not going to work as a (four-actor) play. A TV series maybe?”

Enter the U of A, and “the chance to expand and make it as big as I wanted.” He spent his professor’s sabbatical year re-working the script for 12 actors. And the more “lore-heavy it got,” he says, “the more confusing it got.”

Director Carmen Aguirre, whose background as a Chilean activist during the Pinochet regime has been invaluable, asked the hard question: “‘Ken, are you OK with the audience being confused?’ And I was ‘not really, Carmen’ (laughter)…. I’m so thankful for her as director/ dramaturge. She made me find a way to explain a lot of the lore that’s happening.”      

Deserters by Kenneth T. Williams, U of A Studio theatre. set and props Chelsea Payne Evason; lighting and projections T. Erin Gruber; costumes Kim-Michelle Brown. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective Photography

Deserters owes its theatrical concept, and the aesthetic to ‘80s text-based computer games, ‘Wumpus’ among them…. Video games in the old days you have to visualize in your imagination,” unlike the current crop. “In the alternative reality of the play, the vast majority of the population is female.”

Theatre, he thinks, has not been generous with “scenes where two young women talk to each other onstage. It’s harder (to find) than you’d think; I’m stunned how few there are.”

Talking to Williams is like going to an idea carnival, with fast loping rides where you get to hang upside down and see what the world looks like that way. Next up, for an Indigenous writer and a director who’s “a real-life resistance fighter” as Williams says, came the thorny question of culturally specific casting. The views of Aguirre and Williams aren’t identical (“we debate”). “I believe, philosophically, that actors (should be able to) play anyone,” as per the definition and purpose of acting. “But in practice, the cultural reality now, is that you’re not going to see Indigenous actors getting to play roles,” he argues. “ I believe we need to encourage culturally specific acting as much as possible….” It’s not a level playing field, after all.

“There’s still a cultural barrier that we haven’t been able to articulate, clarify, and get rid of, in order for true colour-free casting to happen. It’s not a criticism, it’s an observation: the majority of theatres in this country are largely white-led institutions serving a large white audience.” And “as much as theatres are trying their best,. it’s not improving the conditions for non-white actors…. Institutions are gun-shy about approaching Indigenous work of any kind. Very few plays that are this big are created by Indigenous playwrights.”

Deserters by Kenneth T. Williams, U of A Studio Theatre. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective. Set and props Chelsea Payne Evason, lighting and projections T. Erin Gruber, costumes Kim-Michelle Brown

Which brings Williams back to his own play. “All through the workshops and dramaturging, I worked exclusively with Indigenous artists,” he says. But as for the production we’ll see, with its 12-member cast exclusively of BFA graduating actors, “in an alternative reality the characters are not racially identified. Anyone can play the roles….”

In this unusually large-scale venture, Williams, who teaches Indigenous theatre, playwriting, screen writing among his academic assignments,  is “very very appreciative” of the contribution of the U of A creative team — the lighting and projections of T. Erin Gruber, for one, and the sound score and original compositions by Matthew Skopyk.

“Very early on in my career I learned that you need to find people who are really smart artists and you let them be the smart people they are. They bring their magic with them. And it lifts stuff up!”

PREVIEW

Deserters

Theatre: U of A Studio Theatre

Written by: Kenneth T. Williams

Directed by: Carmen Aguirre

Starring: Katie O’Keefe, Sable B. Boltz, Liam Sievwright, Abby Krushel, Andrew Domanski, Colby Stockdale, Gabi Stachniak, Travis Edwards, Joshua Hope, Caileigh Muilenburg, Lauren Johnsen, Tori Kibblewhite

Where: Timms Centre for the Arts, 112 St. and 87 Ave.

Running: through April 11

Tickets: showpass.com or 780-492-2495