- The Troubles (Rewrite/ Remount) by Resounding Scream Theatre at the Vancouver International Fringe Festival. Granville Island: Studio 1398 (Playwrights Theatre Centre). For details visit www. resoundingscreamtheatre. com/upcoming-projects. html.
LISTENING to the stories of her parents and grandparents has always interested playwright and actress Stephanie Henderson more than playing with the other children at family gatherings.
Some of those stories have now ended up in her one-woman show, The Troubles, where she plays four members of her own family: her grandmother, grandfather, father, uncle and an incarnation of herself.
The play is set during the time of the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland, and is part of this year's Vancouver Fringe Festival. After her grandparents passed away Henderson, coartistic director of Resounding Scream Theater, started writing the play as a way to connect to her heritage and families stories.
"I find that the Irish culture is really, really story driven and information is passed along through those stories and so I wanted to find a way to bring those stories to life and share them with people," she says.
Henderson started writing The Troubles in 2010 and has found her family to be an unwavering source of support and inspiration.
She says her father has read every edition of the play and often gets emotional when reliving his memories.
He is not the only one, at a Nanaimo show of the play an elderly man on crutches who had lived through the Troubles said to Henderson, "You need to keep sharing these stories, we shouldn't keep quiet about what's going on over there and ignore or forget."
It was this interaction that drove Henderson to edit the play and bring it to the stage again.
The ongoing conflict has affected Northern Ireland for decades with the 1960s and '70s a particularly volatile time. Civilians were caught between nationalists (mostly Roman Catholic) who want to be free from British Rule and rejoin Ireland, and unionists (mostly Protestant) who want to stay a part of the United Kingdom. During the conflict there were car bombings, civil rights marches and sectarian violence. Despite the 1998 peace agreement between the two sides there are still tensions today.
Living in Belfast, Henderson's father and his family experienced the horrors of the Troubles first hand. Henderson's grandmother was held up at gunpoint in the bakery where she worked and her uncle was almost blown up.
"It can either create conflict and tensions within the family and mirror what's going on outside or people can rely on one another and really band together and try to keep each other safe," says Henderson.
Henderson's father, then 16, and his family came to Canada in 1974. Having many family dinners and spending time with her grandparents is how Henderson remembers her childhood.
Each of the family members that Henderson will be embodying in the play will show audiences their experiences of Northern Ireland.
Set in the 1970s, Henderson wants to show how normal life continued despite the conflict and uncertainty and how people adapted their lives.
"The goal was to not harp on the conflict," says Henderson. "Instead I wanted to try and find the simplicity and the normalcy of life inside of all of that."
When she's not on stage, Henderson is a teacher. After earning a diploma in theater at Douglas Collage, Henderson moved on to SFU to study finance and teaching. She now works as a teacher by day and pursues her passion for theater by night.
"I felt really influenced by the teachers that I had in my life to make my decision to pursue acting and theatre as a passion, so I'm really working to find a balance in my life between teaching and theatre," she says.
The first performance of The Troubles takes place tonight at 5 p,m. at Granville Island's Playwrights Theatre Centre. For information on the five remaining shows check out www. resoundingscreamtheatre.com.
