Fighting Days play celebrates women’s right to vote

She begins The Fighting Days by pulling no punches about her intentions to transform democracy.

“My name is Nellie McClung, and I am a disturber,” says Jenny Wright, playing the Canadian suffragist, who helped spearhead a movement to allow a women’s right to vote.

“Disturbers are never popular ,” she says, in a play preview held Wednesday at St. Catharines’ FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre.

“But I have decided I am going to keep on being disturber. I don’t want to pull through life like a thread that has no knot,” she proclaims.

“I want to leave something behind when I go, some small legacy of truth.”

Later, a sexist journalist George McNair, played by Darren Keay, belittles McClung. “It’s always interesting to hear a woman speak in public,” he sniffs.

“It’s sort of like seeing a pony walking on its hind legs — it’s clever, but not natural.”

The Essential Collective Theatre play by Nova Scotia playwright Wendy Lill spotlights the sufferage movement in Manitoba, with a focus on McClung, and Benyon sisters Lillian and Francis, who are all writers.

The Winnipeg-set play — marking one hundred years since women were granted the right to vote — also folds in the mounting troubles of its First World War era, the conscription crisis and freedom of expression.

Fighting Days, which runs at the PAC from Thursday to Nov. 4, marks the first regional tour presented by the St. Catharines-based ECT.

After its premier, the play tours Niagara in venues that include Welland, Vineland, Port Colborne, Pelham, Wainfleet and Ridgeway, and continues until Nov. 12.

It’s a script that also has interesting relevance to a presidential election south of the border, with ongoing accusations of misogyny and intolerance being leveled at Republican candidate Donald Trump.

Speaking after the performance snippet, the professional actors remarked on this, and the production’s relevance.

“It feels exciting and timely and is exactly what people need to hear right now,” said Christina Nicolaou, who is Lillian Benyon in the production. “This reminds us that it wasn’t so long ago when women weren’t considered equal, and now with the U.S. election and (its rhetoric), you realize, well… this is familiar.”

Reanne Spitzer, who plays Lillians’s sister Francis, agrees the show is “so relevant in a lot of ways that’s unfortunate,” she said. “In 100 years, we have come so far, but there’s still so far to go.”

“It’s too bad this is something we need to still keep discussing and needs to be reminded to these audiences.”

Wright, a Niagara-on-the-Lake actress, says playing McClung is an honour and close to her heart as she was from the Prairies.

“It feels personal that way,” she said. Wright is also a member of the Shaw Festival acting ensemble, who has been seen in more than 40 productions including most recently, Sweeney Todd and Our Town.

Darren Keay, who some may recognize in his role as Geoff Evans in the TV series The Girlfriend Experience, says his character as a reporter in Fighting Days showcases a personal journey in the script.

“This play represents very much a traditionalist point of view, which sadly you can still see so much today,” said Keay, a Fonthill resident.

Play and theatre artistic director Monica Dufault said Lill’s script was originally produced in Winnipeg in the last 1980s.

“I have always loved this play and wanted to produce it,” Dufault said, adding it seemed the right way to mark the century since women in Canada gained voting rights.

“With the election happening in the States it also seemed like a good time to produce this show... and (to also appreciate) that women in Canada were able to vote before Britain and the U.S,” she said.