Stage sets from Strike! could be destined for dumpster Danny Schur’s wife hopes new home can be found for theatrical pieces By: Ben Waldman Posted: 12:55 PM CDT Wednesday, Jul. 5, 2023

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 05/07/2023 (1155 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When he died in April, local theatre impresario Danny Schur left behind a legacy of dogged determination, best defined by his independent development of the musical Strike!, which put Winnipeg’s 1919 labour conflict at centre stage.

But Schur also left behind something a bit bulkier: the costumes, props and hand-painted backgrounds that brought the show, later adapted to the big screen, to life.

Eighteen years after Strike! debuted on Rainbow Stage, those wooden cutouts — some depicting Winnipeg’s old city hall and the streetcar famously upturned by union activists — sit on the second floor of a Henry Avenue warehouse, stacked unceremoniously in a corner, coated with dust.

Come Monday morning, they’ll have to go: the furniture company operating next door needs the space to contain its expanding product line, says Juliane Schaible, Schur’s wife, who would like the pieces to avoid the landfill and continue to be of use in some creative or historic capacity.

They’re free to anyone who wants them.

“These are meant to help promote Winnipeg and our history,” she says.

Though he worked for decades as a composer and writer, Schur was an avowed amateur historian, Schaible says. He produced works centred on legendary goaltender Terry Sawchuk and Ukrainian immigration to Winnipeg and before he died of glioblastoma at age 56, he was at work on the story about Canadians of Austro-Hungarian origins sent to internment camps during the First World War. Another dream story to pursue in film or theatre form focused on Louis Riel and his political cohort.

Danny Schur, who brought the Winnipeg General Strike to the stage and cinemas, died Monday of brain cancer

Strike! came as a result of Schur falling down a research rabbit hole after learning of Mike Sokolowski, a Ukrainian man killed during the 1919 General Strike. Around that character, Schur and co-writer Rick Chafe fashioned a post-First World War Romeo and Juliet set amid local unrest.

It was a true underdog story, with Schur refusing to give up as he ushered his idea from dream to reality between 2002 and 2019.

To mount the 2005 stage show at Rainbow Stage, the irrepressible Schur personally raised $700,000 by applying for grants while canvassing anyone and everyone he could find.

For the 2019 film adaptation, which showed on two dozen Cineplex screens across Canada during the strike’s centennial year, the budget reached into the multi-millions.

Both productions were well-received, even if they didn’t cover their costs, and Schur’s dedication to his passion project commanded as much respect as the works themselves.

“He moved mountains to make (Strike!) happen,” Rainbow Stage artistic director Carson Nattrass told the Free Press in April. “He means everything to me.”

It’s Schur’s passion that makes Schaible determined to find the remaining setpieces a new home.

So far, she’s found a few takers: windows, metal trusses and a spiral staircase from the original stage set were repurposed for Rainbow Stage’s current run of Rent.

“Juliane invited us to take whatever we could use in our theatre, and we left with props, costumes and the wood and risers used in the show,” says Nattrass, who also performed in Strike!

Some props and setpieces were given to Glenlawn Collegiate for its performing arts program. The Manitoba Federation of Labour visited the warehouse Tuesday afternoon, says Schaible, who hopes the organization will find a way to use some of the remaining items. Filmmaker Deco Dawson has claimed a few prop telephone poles, she adds.

The city’s film office has been contacted, and Schaible is waiting to see if it will take some of the pieces off her hands.

“In typical Danny Schur fashion, the community is coming together to help,” she says, but about 15 wooden backgrounds are mere days away from being cleared out by the furniture company, which Schaible says has graciously extended its deadline to accommodate her.

“I truly hope it can be used appropriately,” she says, adding that anyone with interest can email dannyschur@hotmail.com.

“It all needs to go somewhere,” she adds. “Because it just can’t stay here.”

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com

Ben Waldman
Reporter

Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the Free Press while earning his degree at Ryerson University’s (now Toronto Metropolitan University’s) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019. Read more about Ben.

Every piece of reporting Ben produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.