Finding family, finding truth

The latest play written by southern Manitoban duo Darrell Racine and Dale Lakevold is Rattle, a story rooted in the inherited legacy of the ’60s Scoop.

Based on the stories of Robert Doucette and Roberta MacKinnon — friends and students of the playwriting pair — this play from Brandon-based Root Sky Theatre, directed by Charlene van Buekenhout and Cory Wojcik, opens at the Asper Centre for Theatre and Film on Wednesday night.

Rattle is the fourth product of the Racine-Lakevold playwriting partnership, following Misty Lake, Stretching Hide and 2024’s Owl Calling.

Each play by the twosome thus far has been a heartfelt study of issues facing Indigenous Peoples in Canada, using history as a mirror to understand the country’s legacy of both immense harm and attempted reconciliation.

A co-production with local collective Theatre Incarnate — Brenda McLean and Christopher Sobczak — Rattle was awarded the best full-length play award in Theatre BC’s Canadian National Playwriting Competition.

Earlier this year, Racine, a professor of native studies at Brandon University, also launched Stolen Science, a podcast about the “largely unacknowledged contributions of Indigenous Peoples to Western European science between 1670 and 1870,” according to the university.

Rattle is set on a North End street in Winnipeg where friends Bobbie (Melanie Badger) and Dan (Josh Ranville) are finding where they belong.

Meanwhile, Bobbie’s son Jordan (Mackenzie Wojcik, Cory’s son) forges a bond with Dan’s kid Crystal (Dezarae Meade), who hopes against hope that she won’t have to move to the south end.

Dan and Bobbie met when Bobbie aged out of care, learning to relate to one another as found family.

The character of Bobbie is based on MacKinnon, who was taken away from her biological family at the age of two. Adopted by a Mennonite family, Bobbie is always wondering not only where she came from, but why she was taken away, the actor explains.

“Any moments where the past is brought up it’s just too painful to confront those things,” Badger says.

Fateful interactions with the next generation and her ancestors help Bobbie find her truth, she adds. “In that moment it’s her healing moment, you can really feel that part of the play where she found her place,” adds Badger, an actor whose most recent performance was in 2019, in Theatre by the River’s The Hours That Remain.

Badger’s first performance was in Douglas Nepinak’s Crisis in Oka, Manitoba. That play — staged at Prairie Theatre Exchange last year as part of the second annual Kiyanaan Festival, produced by Van Buekenhout and Philip Geller — has served as an inspiration for both Lakevold and Racine.

“I’d like to think of it as blood memory as an actor, that’s the choice I made (in approaching the role of Bobbie), is that instant connection to her mother, her memory, her roots, her place,” says Badger, who works for the Winnipeg Foundation and Manitobah Storyboot School, a national charity offering cultural craftmaking workshops.

The play opens Wednesday with nightly performances to Saturday beginning at 7:30 p.m. Matinees run Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m.

The production is sponsored by the Riverton & District Friendship Centre and received funding from the National Sixties Scoop Healing Foundation of Canada, along with both Canada and Manitoba arts councils.

winnipegfreepress.com/benwaldman

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