Onstage intersections of traffic and storytelling

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This article was published 22/01/2025 (429 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A new traffic light signals a small town’s changing fortunes and a group of women fish for solutions in a double-bill of one-act plays presented by two Winnipeg community theatre groups this week.

The Winnipeg Mennonite Theatre’s localized production of playwright Tracy Wells’ One Stoplight Town and An Seanchai Theatre Company’s version of London playwright Robert Iles’ Towpath are on from Thursday, Jan. 23 to Sunday, Jan. 26 at the Irish Association of Manitoba’s Erin Street theatre.

It’s the first time the two companies have collaborated, says Laura Enns, the Mennonite Theatre’s secretary and producer of One Stoplight Town.

Director Hayden Maines says that it was easy for him to relate to the subject matter of Wells’ original script, which the Mennonite Theatre transplanted from the U.S. to a small unnamed town in Manitoba.

The 25-year-old was born in Neepawa and split his childhood between Leaf Rapids and Gillam before moving to Steinbach and later Winnipeg, where he works for the federal government in a public health capacity.

“What really spoke to me about it was the passage of time that occurs within it. It’s a play that spans generations,” says Maines, who has produced a staging of The Great Gatsby for the Fringe Festival and acted with the Shoestring Players.

The script begins in 1989, jumping forward in seven-year intervals to 2003 to showcase what changes have transpired in the interim.

“It’s a feel-good chance to walk down memory lane and a chance to see how Canada and our culture has changed,” Maines says.

His own experience with community theatre is a small-town story. As a high school student at Kildonan-East Collegiate, Maines was cast in a Shoestring Players production when a member of the company told his mother in Gladstone they needed a young male actor for a key role; the member’s mother was a neighbour of Maines’ aunt, who recommended her nephew. Soon, Maines was playing Lester Cole in a production of Agatha Christie’s Verdict.

An Seanchai, an independent company associated with the Irish Association of Manitoba, is producing Towpath on its home stage, directed by Rob Kwade. The play follows four women as they share their stories with one another, finding that they share more than they expected with one another.

Both plays deal with the deep and surprising connections that come by sharing experiences.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com