Queen Charlotte Island Observer - GOLDEN SPRUCE PLAY AUTHOR VISITS ISLANDS - September 5th, 2008
By Alex Rinfret
A Toronto
actor who is performing the play he wrote about the Golden Spruce across Canada
this summer took a break from his tour recently to visit the islands for the
first time.
Alex Eddington said it gave him the shivers to see the spot where his play is
set and which he imagines during every performance: the bank of the Yakoun
River just outside Port Clements where the felled Golden Spruce still lies.
His show, titled "Old Growth", is about two fictional musicians from Toronto who travel to that very spot in October 1997, nine months after the Golden Spruce was chainsawed down by Grant Hadwin. Through the hour-long play, the characters conduct rituals, experience eco-epiphanies, play drums and flute, do magic, and talk about the message of environmental responsibility they want to convey to humanity.
Mr. Eddington described the show as "a strong blunt message about
environmental responsibility" which also explores questions like
""How far can you go before you're actually crazy?" and "Is
being really passionate and doing the wrong thing crazy?"
Mr. Eddington said he was inspired to write the play after hearing John
Vaillant, the author of the best-selling book "The Golden Spruce"
interviewed on the radio, and then reading the book. Trained as a composer, his
first thought was that the story would make an incredible opera. He then
decided to tell the story more simply, through the lens of fictional characters
and their fictional experience at the site of the very real tree stump.
But he hasn't ruled out writing the opera. "Even more, since visiting the
islands, I am thinking about that," he said. "I am starting to hammer
out a libretto."
He finished writing Old Growth, his third play, this spring and then took it on
tour. So far, he has performed it at theatre festivals in Ottawa, Toronto,
Winnipeg, Victoria and Calgary. In September, he will present it at the
Vancouver Fringe.
Between his Calgary and Victoria performances, he realized he had just enough
time to drive to Prince Rupert, take the ferry Aug. 13 and spend a couple of
days on the islands. He stayed at the Golden Spruce Motel in Port, just like
Grant Hadwin did, although not in the same room (Mr. Hadwin had stayed in a
kitchenette, which was beyond Mr. Eddington's budget after paying the ferry
fare). He also visited the Port museum where he read the newspaper clippings
about the Golden Spruce and marvelled at the size of the white raven. A delicious
dinner at the Trout House restaurant after a visit to Tow Hill just about
convinced him to stay here, he said.
Most of his time was spent on the trail out to the Yakoun River bank where the
fallen spruce is still visible on the other side of the river. Mr. Eddington
recorded the sounds of the forest and took pictures as he walked along the
trail but unlike Mr. Hadwin, he did not swim across the river to get right next
to the tree.
"I debated for a long time whether I should just make a fool of myself and
jump in the river," he said. "I didn't, for a couple of reasons... I
didn't want to break the spell by going over and seeing the downed tree."
Mr. Eddington said he was also respectful of the fact that the tree lies on
Haida land and that he hadn't sought permission to go right up to it.
The experience will probably influence his performances in the future, he said,
as the site was somewhat different than what he had imagined. The real forest
does not have as much bare tree trunk visible, the trees were shorter than he
had imagined, and there was not much of a clearing around the spruce, he said.
FIVE QUESTIONS with Brad MacNeil (Ottawa Fringe) – posted June 27th 2008
Interview with Andrew Alexander (Ottawa Fringe) – posted June 28th 2008
“The show is based on a true story on Grant Hadwin and the golden spruce,” says Alex Eddington as we chat about his show, Old Growth. I tell him I’d never heard of a golden spruce, or Grant Hadwin. “The golden spruce was a tree that used to stand on the Queen Charlotte Islands; it was a real freak of nature, it shouldn’t have grown. It didn’t have enough chlorophyll, but it lived to be at least 300 years old. The Haida people, the natives there considered it sacred; they had a legend about a little boy being turned into a tree.”
In 1997, Grant Hadwin, a former logger with previous schizophrenic episodes, cut down the tree in the middle of the night. He was charged and meant to be tried, but disappeared in a kayak accident. There were many threats on Hadwin’s life.
Alex and his co-star Aura Giles met four years ago - he was
her T.A. when they were both taking music at the University of Alberta. “Old
Growth is my artistic way of dealing with this story. I came up with two
fictional characters who become obsessed with this story; they read the articles
about this, it’s an epiphany for them, and they eventually decide to go to the
site where the tree has been cut down. So the story takes place on the site of
the golden spruce in this bit of old growth forest. We imagine the tree is
lying across the front of the stage between us and the audience, we’re playing
flute and drums, speaking to this tree. As the hour unfolds, you realize why
we’re there and what we hope we’re going to accomplish.”
“There’s a lot of other stuff thrown into the mix; my
character is an amateur magician, and has become really fixated on shamanism.
He thinks that by visiting this tree he’s going to trade in the trick magic for
a magical ability to speak to the world.”
I ask Eddington about the genesis of his show. “I started
thinking that this show should be an opera - Grant Hadwin and the Golden
Spruce. And I might write an opera about it someday. I originally was going to
make it a one-man show, a monologue from my perspective. But I’m working with
the same director/dramaturge I worked with last year on the Fugue Code, Alison
Williams. She insisted that I have someone else on stage with me, and insisted
that person be a woman, and that that person should be the quiet counterpart
for all the stuff I wanted to say. All the way along she’s been pushing to make
Aura a more important character, the centre that holds my character together.
She’s very important to the play; she says a lot less than I do, but what she
says speaks volumes. She kind of saves me from myself at the end. We hope.”
After their first three shows in Ottawa, the cast went back
to the rehearsal hall and made some cuts, which emphasized the importance of
Aura’s character. Response to the show has been very positive on the
ottawafringe website, and CBC’s theatre reviewer, Alvina Ruprecht, gave the
show a glowing review. Alex isn’t letting it go to his head. “It’s hard to say
yet; we’ve just started. This is a show with some pretty extreme violence in
it, with some potentially polarizing views, but the way I write about it and
the way my character speaks about environmental stuff is meant to be very
common sense. Anybody could develop this argument themselves, you’re meant to
do it with him as the play goes on. That this is a controversy I personally
think is ridiculous, but I know it is. And that is why I needed to write this
play. These things should be part of our daily discussions. So potentially some
people are off-put by some of that stuff, by the strength of the message, by
the violence at the end, there’s nudity in the show as well. But on the whole,
I’m talking to people and people are seeming to like it. I think we have
tweaking to do, to keep the balance between these characters. My character can
be a little overwhelming.”
When people ask Eddington if he’s a tree-hugger, he says “No, but I do hug trees. This show is about taking those things and twisting them, and seeing that there is absolutely no reason there should be scorn for someone who cares about maintaining our ability to eat, breath, reproduce and live in our own habitat. That’s why I say it’s a common-sense argument. If people are feeling that way, I will never be able to change them. If the show is labelled as the eco-show, then I think that’s okay. It is. I’ll take that label. Not in the same way that Crude Love is, it’s a show about eco-terrorism. I think my show is a little more ambiguous about what it’s trying to say.”
Beach Metro News – Tuesday June 17th 2008
Bill MacLean’s Entertainment Beat
It's time again for the Toronto Fringe
Festival. July 2 to 13 will see dozens
of short plays performed in several venues around the city. It's your chance to
see up and coming playwrights and actors up close and personal for a
very reasonable price. Two Beachers are among the many playwrights mounting
productions at this year's Fringe.
AIex Eddington is an award-winning musician and composer who has decided to
concentrate his talents on writing and performing unique theatrical works. His
company, Acky-Made Productions, was formed in 2006, and has produced two one-man shows: WOOL and The Fugue Code,
both of which have toured the Fringe circuit in Canada to good reviews.
This year Alex has written his first play for two
called Old Growth. Old Growth
is directed by Alison Williams, and stars Eddington and Aura Giles. It
blends fact and fiction to create a story about the legendary Golden Spruce, an
ancient spiritually significant tree in the Queen Charlotte Islands of British
Columbia that was felled as a protest to clear-cutting practices. Eddington plays Alex, a young
environmentally sensitive man who visits the tree, and who develops shaman-like
powers. Giles plays Aura, his friend
and cohort. Old Growth mixes improvised music and magic to tell a story
that needs to be told.
tour dates and ticket infocast/crew