The Amazing Catherine Banks

When he’s not scouring the web for stories that inspire, energize and astonish the blogosphere, Slowhopes teaches playwrighting online for the University of British Columbia, which is only the greatest part-time gig ever invented. But imagine our surprise a week or so back, when they announced the coveted Governor-General nominations–the Canadian version of the Pulitzers–and one of Slowhopes’ students, Catherine Banks, made the shortlist in drama, for her play Bone Cage!

How great is that?

Here’s Catherine’s bio in the Playwrights Canada Press:

Catherine Banks

Plays by Catherine Banks include Bone Cage, Eula’s Offer, The Summer of the Piping Plover (UpStart Theatre); Three Storey Ocean View (Mulgrave Road Theatre, Toronto Equity Showcase); and Bitter Rose (Women’s Theatre and Creativity Centre). Bitter Rose has aired on Bravo! Canada. Her work has been performed in Manitoba, Toronto and St. John’s at the LSPU Hall. Three Storey Ocean View won the Silver Medal in the 1995 du Maurier National Play Competition and was nominated for a Merrit Award for best new play in 2000. Bone Cage was awarded the Special Merit prize in the 2002 Theatre BC New Play Competition and was showcased at the National Arts Centre’s On the Verge 2005. Her work is poetic, darkly humorous, courageous and beautifully theatrical. Some of her characters, Lud in Three Storey Ocean View and Clarence in Bone Cage, have been described as Atlantic Gothic. Always a writer, Catherine started professional life as a Special Education teacher. She began writing plays while raising her children, Rilla and Simon. She currently lives and writes in Sambro, Nova Scotia.

Anyways, Catherine has been having her plays produced for a long time, so the only thing late blooming about her is getting a little national attention for her consistently excellent work. (She is studying to get an MFA because the irony of these gigs is that you may be a much-produced playwright short-listed for the Governor-General’s Award in drama, but unless you have an MFA, it’s impossible to get a job teaching it.)

But it gets even better: Banks, fed up with being told by artistic directors that Bone Cage had too many characters, too many set requirements, and too much gritty language to produce,said to hell with it, rented out a prestige theatre (the Neptune), raised 37K, helped build sets, drove to Halifax (she lives in Sambro, NS), and produced it herself, with the help of a few talented members of the Halifax theatre community.

Result: she made back over 36K, snagged critical kudos, and is now not only shortlisted, but Slowhoped!

There are thousands of playwrights out there — not to mention screenwriters, novelists, poets, bloggers — with a script in a drawer, who wait patiently for someone to give them permission to unleash it on the world.

But you know what? No one has very much invested in giving you that permission. Every artistic director at every theatre is under terrible pressure to put bums in seats–and that was before the economy caved in. They all have to sift through the scripts, arrange the time-consuming readings, conduct the workshops, give the notes, get the thing rewritten–either that, or they can reach into their grab bag for the latest Off-Broadway critical hit, arrange to get the rights, and produce a play that’s already been audience-tested.

And it’s just as dodgy for a book editor, or — particularly — a Hollywood development exec to ever push something new. New might be original. New might be Quentin Tarantino. But new might also be Skeet Ulrich making the cover of Vanity Fair magazine as the next major movie star.

I wonder if the person who pitched Skeet to Graydon Carter still works there?

We’re thrilled to see Catherine recognized for her writing, and inspired that she had the guts and determination and sheer doggedness to get it out into the world, instead of leaving it in her drawer.

This is how the Canada Council described Bone Cage in its release:

Drama

Catherine Banks, Halifax, Bone Cage.
(Playwrights Canada Press; distributed by the publisher)
(ISBN 978-0-88754-787-4)
A big play about tough lives in rural Nova Scotia. Bone Cage puts these lives under the microscope and scrutinizes them with piercing intelligence. The play resonates far beyond its rural setting to probe the struggles and hopes of people everywhere, particularly those trapped in dead-end jobs. At times it’s a struggle to dream. This play spans history and is a play for today – tragic, funny, nuanced and poetic.

Here’s part of what one Halifax blogger, Ron Foley Macdonald, said after seeing Bone Cage:

Surrounding the not-so-happy couple is the wreckage of two generations of broken families, limited economic opportunities and environmental degradation, all encapsulated by Jamie’s older half-sister Chicky, played with precise longing by Kate Lavender.

And yet in the opening scenes of the play, Catherine Banks provides enough late adolescent and early adult joy to remind us all that these are tough, real characters who take their enjoyment when they can get it.

Consequently, there’s enough profanity, drinking, violence and sex in the play to scare off polite audiences and mainstream producers. Put on independently by Forerunner’s Playwright’s Co-Op, Bone Cage is perhaps the most spectacular full-scale launch of a new Nova Scotia play ever.