Consciousness, Literature and the Arts

 

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Volume 11 Number 3, December 2010

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JAKE’S GIFT

at Manitoba Theatre for Young People, 2010

 

it is two weeks before Remembrance Day and the flags

are accompanied by pipe playing  “Highland Cathedral” 

 

before the show

with its gift of three characters from one Julia Mackey

who shifts between their gestures voices and stances

sharp and quick delineations

the old Canadian veteran, Jake

a tremor in his left arm and grumpy resilience in his voice

the statuesque French grandmother

who teaches good manners

and the art of remembrance to her granddaughter

the curious and rambunctious Isabelle

 

simplicity is the name of the game

this is about actor and lights

that shape space and body

aura-like against black curtains

 

Jake’s memory is personal

he fought along with his brothers and lost

one of them at Juno Beach

 

Isabelle is ten and is building memories

of her grandmother and now of Jake

her reach goes back before her birth

to when Grandmother was a girl of ten

named Isabelle who lost her father

to a Nazi bullet

 

this is also the Shabbat of Chaye Sarah

when we remember Sarah’s life and Abraham’s

buying her burial site and the new life he must enter

this is no one’s memory but is remembered

as an act of culture - how we become identities

 

and this evening we become Canadians again

(because to take hold identity must be ever replayed)

with the help of an invented ten-year old French girl

on a nearly bare stage playing Juno Beach

paying our respects to those in whose deaths we live

as not American, not British, not French,

but as a different, blended pride

 

weather and geography play their part, too

we are reminded as we head into the first snow

glittering in the street lights

 

- P.K. Brask