Several decades of Stevestons fishing history will be condensed into 90 minutes during the theatrical production of Salmon Row.
Taking place at the Britannia Shipyards National Historic Site from Aug. 15 to Sept. 1 and first presented by Vancouver-based performance arts company Mortal Coil in 2011, producer and general manager Marietta Kozak calls it a large scale spectacle piece.
Its our second production using site-specific spectacle-based techniques. We use masks, puppets, stilts, that kind of large, large scale as opposed to small TV-sized stuff, said Kozak.
In fact, stilt work was what Mortal Coil mainly started out doing when it was formed in 1991. Now, they are best known for 2008s interdisciplinary piece Letters from Lithuania staged in Stanley Park, where they also develop and run the Halloween Ghost Train and Christmas Bright Nights events every year.
With Salmon Row, Kozak said people can expect a similar infusion of music and choreography with heavy narrative weaved in.
The show starts off in front of the historic site, then the audience moves along with the cast of 30 actors, dancers and musicians to various iconic areas inside, such as the boardwalk, the Chinese bunkhouse and the Murakami house and boat works.
The story speaks a lot about what the Europeans did when we first got here, said Kozak.
What was interesting to us was the exploiting of resources, and how society builds itself afterwards. Its the same as the logging industry exploitation creates complex relationships between the people.
There is stuff around unions and labour, ethnic politics and what happened when the fish dried up.
The original run of Salmon Row two years ago sold out in four days, something Kozak attributes to how many groups the performance touches.
From the late 19th to mid-20th centuries, the fishing community in Steveston was home to First Nations, Caucasians, Japanese and Chinese, all of which are represented in the performance.
People really responded to the stories being told. It was about them, their experiences and about their families. It really spoke to the citizenry.
The idea first popped onto her radar when someone suggested Britannia as a potential place to develop a production around.
She and husband Peter Hall, who is also Mortal Coils co-artistic director, visited the site and felt it was fantastic.
After a few meetings with the City of Richmond, the company received the green light and then went on to raise the $250,000 through government grants needed to put everything together.
Kozak said she was thrilled when the city approached her to put on the play for a second time. This years remounting remains close to the original with some tightening of the script and all but five of the original cast members returning.
Born in Kelowna, playwright Nicola Harwood was about as far removed from the historical trials and tribulations of Steveston Village as possible within B.C.
That hasnt stopped the 53-year-old writer, producer and actor from tackling a project that piqued her interest.
It was all new to me. Ive looked at B.C. history and Interior stuff before, and I was fascinated with the early history of central B.C. But I hadnt really looked at the coast, said Harwood, who now lives in Vancouver and has been in the theatre business since the early 1980s.
She first partnered with Mortal Coil during their initial collaboration, Letters of Lithuania, which explored issues of family history and discrimination during the Second World War.
Harwood said she is fascinated by tidbits of knowledge from the past that many native British Columbians never learned and simply arent aware of, like early legislation implemented to secure White supremacy in the province.
This is just one of the topics she wanted to explore in Salmon Row.
Its through the characters, their perseverance and the resource itself the salmons classic struggle up the river trying to get past the nets and trying to maintain their life cycle, said Harwood.
And then theres the humans trying to maintain their life cycle. A big metaphor we play with is that theres always levels of predatory energy thats going to block the run, youre not going to make it to your destination in life.
You see what got thrown up at the Aboriginal communities, the Japanese community and the Chinese community, as they try to make their way in the new economy. Humans are engaged in a similar struggle as they make their way.
Through two years of in-depth research, Harwood devised the script that follows four or five story arcs.
We joke its kind of like a TV series. You get attached to a character and theres another four that have an arc in place. Thats what works really well, theres a narrative that you follow over time.
Although mostly fiction, the play is based on real events and places.
There is a part that focuses on Ling Lam, the proprietor of Richmonds first supermarket, the Hong Wo General Store, that she came up with after discovering the exhibit at the Gulf of Georgia Cannery National Historic Site.
Harwood also became inspired after watching a video and seeing photographs of The Iron Chink at the cannery, the big red machine that replaced Chinese fish butchers, and wrote in a scene where it is represented by an blade-wielding actor dressed in all red.
The rest of her research revolved around touring and meeting with staff at the Britannia Shipyards, digging into books and archives, as well talking to people with ties to that era.
One woman I interviewed told me a story about her father, said Harwood.
She grew up in Steveston and there was one memory about her father never learning to swim who was a Japanese fisherman. He said, There is one inch of cedar between me and hell, and we managed to use that line in the show.
The biggest challenge that Salmon Row director Peter Hall has encountered so far during production has simply been ensuring that Stevestons heritage gets depicted the best way possible.
I think the process was quite complex to try and corral the stories that we wanted to tell into a cohesive whole that covered them
all, said Hall.
A big part of doing so was finding the right cast members. Hall said his company engaged in colourblind casting, to honour the various ethnicities that came to work during turbulent times and who continue to work and contribute to the North American economy today.
We have an array of First Nations from Cree this year and we have a new actress, shes Inuit. We also have Asian actors that range from Japanese to Korean. We have Korean playing Chinese, we have Chinese playing Japanese, we have Cree playing Musqueam.
Integral to the process is also choosing the right music, which is why Hall said Salmon Row features all original music by Canadian composer Tobin Stokes who is known for his work in opera and classical music. He has also composed several scores for television, an experience which will perfectly complement the scenes in the play that turn on edge and become surreal.
Stilt figures appear metaphorically we have a martial arts battle with what is familiarly known as the Iron Chink, the machine that replaced Chinese workers, said Hall.
We have a character on stilts playing the machine, and he has a battle with two Chinese workers fighting with Chinese swords. That sort of combination of spectacle and text is so the audience never knows what they can expect next.
He called the Britannia site very evocative and allows for organic transitions between the plays many acts.
At the beginning, people gather just outside the shipyards where they are greeted by a First Nations drum troupe. Weaving through the property, the show eventually ends with a funeral at the Murakami house.
Officially opening on Aug. 16, shows start at 8 p.m. rain or shine at the Britannia Heritage Shipyards at 5180 Westwater Dr.
Tickets, $16 for adults, $13 for students/seniors and $8.50 for children 12 and under, are available at the Gateway Theatre (6500 Gilbert Rd.) or online at www.gatewaytheatre.com.
