Playwright’s Notes – Patti Flather

This play dates back to my first few winters after I moved here in 1988, a visceral feeling, the time of muffin trucks and long stretches of ice fog forty below, the Faro mine closing and re-opening, rushing from work to the Taku on a frosty Friday trying to find a table or find a friend who had one, cross-cultural romances between people from North and South and somewhere in between. People I knew were dreaming of West Edmonton Mall. Some of them even got there.

Christine came out of this time and place. Her voice came instantly to me, while Outside, in my pad near Pacific Spirit Park, during my first year of a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of B.C. Her voice has stayed with me since, clear and consistent, through a series of drafts and leaps. Christine emerged from a linear short story in Linda Svendsen’s short fiction workshop. She took the stage in a student theatre production at UBC with me as the actor and SG Lee directing.

Christine’s voice and journey became more fragmented and complex. Rachel Ditor helped me get there, over long mochas in The Beanery at UBC Family Housing. So did Nakai’s Michael Clark. I think it was playwright and actor Marcus Youssef who read the first few pages of Christine on way too much caffeine, at an idyllic Nakai Writers Retreat at Inn-on-the-Lake. Nakai made additional dramaturgy possible with a one-week workshop; Michael, actor Sandy Paddick and I. Thanks also to Hope McIntyre, Demetra Hajidiacos and Sarasvati Productions in Winnipeg, which mounted a festival production.

Additional thanks to Playwrights Theatre Centre, Chapelle Jaffe, Penny Gummerson, Sara Graefe, Tanya Van Valkenburg, David Skelton, Dean Eyre, Moira Sauer, Guiniveve Lalena, Kim Barlow, Christine Genier, David Skelton, Lucy van Oldenbarneveld, CBC Radio Drama, Kathleen Flaherty, Jeff Thomson, Ruth Hall, Brenda Barnes, Kelly Thornton, Julia and Ric Murrell, Leonard, Erin, Sophia, Joe, Nancy.

I hope you enjoy going back to 1993 with Christine. Whitehorse feels different to me now; I’m older, I quit drinking, I’m a soccer mom for godsake. But it feels just the same. I think Christine’s still here.