An upcoming theatrical reading in Gibsons presented as part of the long-running Off the Page performance series will pay tribute to its founder: musician, screenwriter and playwright David King.
King, the Winnipeg-born recipient of Jessie Richardson theatre awards and accolades from the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television, was a resident of Grantham’s Landing and died in 2021.
King established the Off the Page series at the Heritage Playhouse to highlight the work of British Columbian playwrights. Three of its latest stagings have featured dramatists who won the award established by Touchstone Theatre in his honour (Pippa Mackie, for Hurricane Mona; David Johnston, for Tuxedoes; and Melody Anderson, for Home).
King’s play Up Island was originally performed on the Stanley stage of Vancouver’s Arts Club Theatre in the winter of 2007. Noted B.C. actor Nicola Cavendish occupied three roles; onetime Beachcombers guest star Allan Zinyk also portrayed a trio of zany characters. It is one of the 25 of King’s scripts that was professionally produced by Canadian theatre companies over his lifetime.
“Up Island is set up to be kind of wacky,” said Off the Page co-producer Peter Hill. “David was really good at creating eccentric characters. It’s just a bunch of weirdos that you could meet any day.”
The plot recounts a husband who has been expelled by his wife from their Vancouver Island home. He returns to the house to collect a few personal items, appearing at the same time that his wife is hosting a social gathering (an early-morning “oyster brunch”) attended entirely by outlandish neighbours he despised.
King chose Campbell River as the setting for the work. “I think David knew somebody that lived over there,” Hill recalled, “so I think he might have spent some time in the area.”
Both Hill and his co-producer Pamela Girone toured the mid-Island region to investigate the play’s origins. While its actual environs are based in reality — south of Courtenay, in proximity to Fanny Bay and Union Bay, where an actual kayak shop provided the basis for its stage equivalent — King invented a certain neighbourhood out of whole cloth: all the characters reside on the fictitious Old Creamery Road.
Girone and Hill visited the regional library to determine whether such a place existed (it doesn’t). “I think David probably had a good chuckle when he created that name,” Hill observed.
The original staging of Up Island included a four-legged actor close to King: his pet dog Flip. The canine was required to make an entrance and eat out of a dish during each performance of the month-long run. In the upcoming Gibsons reading, the part originally played by Flip will be relegated to a toy dog.
The human characters will be portrayed by a large group of local actors: Melissah Charboneau, Kris Fleerackers, Lisa Furfaro, Pamela Girone, Ivy Lock, Steve Schwabl, Patrick Visser, and Peter Hill himself. Wanda Nowicki reads the stage directions aloud. During rehearsals, a cast member observed that the text’s eclectic personalities evoke the work of Québecois playwright Michel Tremblay (who immortalized urban Montreal culture in Les Belles-sœurs), but with distinctly West Coast flair.
“Rather than always going to central Canada, David insisted on writing about this place and the people who live around here,” Hill recalled. “Sometimes when you live here, you might think: that could be a pretty good play. But David actually wrote them.”
Up Island appears at the Heritage Playhouse in Gibsons at 1 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 9. Admission ($10 to $20 suggested) is payable by card or cash at the door.
