Lousy odds, lousy lives

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This article was published 08/04/2010 (5976 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Decked out in a classy tuxedo, Carolyn Gray would meander the rows of VLTs at the posh Crystal Casino dispensing change to patrons chasing the illusive jackpot.

It wasn’t long before serving as a human bank began to weigh her down — and it had nothing to do with the 50-pound load of coins strapped to her body. It was all about watching the depressing parade of losers exiting the one-time gambling hot spot atop the stately Fort Garry Hotel. She hated the change she was witnessing.

"It was the worst job I ever had," says Gray, grimacing at the memory during a recent interview. "I never saw anyone leave with a pot they had won."

She remembers one happy woman who arrived early all upbeat about an impending vacation but by the end of Gray’s shift was miserable over blowing all of her holiday money.

"It made me sick," Gray says. "By the end, I was telling people to leave.

"I always knew that it was something I wanted to write about."

Too many unpleasant encounters with video lottery terminals drove the 43-year-old Gray to pen North Main Gothic, a gothic mystery that goes looking for the damage that VLTs have wreaked on the city and finds it underneath Winnipeg’s notorious "Strip." The premiere tonight at the University of Winnipeg’s Canwest Centre for Theatre and Film (400 Colony St.) closes the 20th anniversary season at Theatre Projects Manitoba.

Gray has had it in for VLTs for a long time. She has watched them tear holes in the fabric of her beloved North End and cause social turmoil and poverty.

"I hate to see those VLTs everywhere," says the U of W graduate. "I hate what I see them do to people."

She remembers when they came to north Main at a time when she worked in a Magnus Avenue nursing home where the staff regularly headed to the Yale Hotel for a burger and a beer. It was a rough-and-tumble but friendly watering hole until VLTs were introduced and the social drinkers began to clash with the gamblers.

"The friendly blue-collar element turned really ugly," says Gray, before resuming her painting of a piece of the set.

North Main Gothic is set in a futuristic Winnipeg where Ian, a bigwig at a energy utility, is involved in a car accident on the strip and gets rolled by Stella, a desperate female gambler in need of fast money to pay her power bill. He is most concerned about getting back his Blackberry and when police are too busy to investigate he launches his own hunt that takes him down the rabbit hole.

"Winnipeg has this element of mystery about it," says actress Monique Marker, who plays Stella. "The play looks at the underground that exists under north Main and the dark side of human beings."

How North Main Gothic mixes social issues and theatre brings to mind the work of the long-gone Popular Theatre Alliance of Manitoba, a troupe which used the stage to change society. Gray does not claim any highfalutin goals.

"I think it would be great if I make people think about the city and the things that happen in it," says Gray, who has been working in theatre mostly as an actor since she was 19. "It is an entertainment for people who care about Winnipeg."

This is her second work with a Winnipeg place name in its title. In 2007 Theatre Projects premiered her breakthrough historical drama The Elmwood Visitation, which looked at spiritualism in 1920s Winnipeg.

It led to her winning the 2008 John Hirsch Award for most promising new writer. It was also published although no other theatre has picked up the script for production. That the intensely local focus of North Main Gothic will make interest outside Winnipeg difficult is of little real concern to Gray.

"If it is a success in Winnipeg and no where else, I would be thrilled," she says. "This is what I want to write about."

There is a decided autobiographical flavour to her fifth play. There are characters in it based on dangerous people she worked with while managing a restaurant in New York City. The scene where Stella tearfully begs for more time to pay her power bill and not to be cut off again is verbatim from her own life.

"I struggled very much with money after I got divorced," says the downtown resident. "I got (my power) cut off a few times. That conversation was so nasty and de-humanizing. I feel so good when I see it on that scene onstage. That is my revenge."

kevin.prokosh@freepress.mb.ca