Jennie’s Story

Synopsis

Jennie's Story is set in the late 1930s on the Canadian prairies. It concerns the Sexual Sterilization Act that was enacted in 1928, allowing a sterilization procedure to be performed without consent on individuals that were deemed to be unfit or mentally challenged. Jennie McGrane takes the title role, and her discovery of what the priest Father Fabrizeau has done to her is the central drama of the play. Believing she had an appendectomy when she was a teenager, the truth is revealed when she's unable to conceive. This was one of Lambert's latter works, and among her finest. In 1999, it was adapted into an independent film by Kim Hogan.

Winner of the 1983 Chalmers Canadian Play Award.

Theatrical Productions

1. The New Play Centre, Canadian Theatre Conference in Sasksatoon, Saskatchewan, and the Waterfront Theatre in Vancouver, British Columbia, October 1981.

Directed by Jace van der Veen

Stage Managed by Paddy McEntee

JENNIE McGrane: Sherry Bie

HARRY McGrane: Pierre Tetrault

FATHER: Edward Fabrizeau: David Ferry

EDNA Delevault: Lillian Carlson

MOLLY Dorval: Laura Bruneau

2. CentreStage Company, St. Lawrence Centre in Toronto, April 1983.

Directed by Bill Glassco

Designed by Sue Le Page

Stage Managed by Catherine Russell

JENNIE McGrane: Nora McLellan

HARRY McGrane: Michael Hogan

FATHER Edward Fabrizeau: William Mockridge

EDNA Delevault: Clare Coulter

MOLLY Dorval: Denise Naples

3. Many subsequent productions both within and outside of Canada.

Reviews

"...[an] ambitious play [that] transports us into another era, and into different levels of reality."

-Vancouver Courier

"This haunting story from Western Canada in the '30s is a fine one and will undoubtedly become a minor classic of contemporary Canadian Theatre...a must for every lover of good theatre."

-Jim Costley, Burlington School Board

"Jennie's Story, like all good plays, is about more than what happens during two acts of hectic action. It is, as the author suggests, a study of how people respond to their entrapment by beliefs and social attitudes, but it is also, at another level, a play about women as the victims of men and men as the victims of their own mythologies. At all levels it is a powerful, involving and disturbing dramatic event."

-Christopher Dafoe, The Vancouver Sun

"Prairie tragedy portrayed on Phoenix stage", The Ring, Volume 21, No. 14 , October 13, 1995.

"Needing a baby for Jennie", The Gazette, Volume 90, Issue 91, March 19, 1997.

About the Play

"This story my mother told me (now she tells me it's not the whole story--she's so angry at me for having written it). I grew up on this story about a woman, a girl really, who had worked for the local priest in southern Alberta. On the advice of the priest, she went to Calgary for an operation, thinking that she was having an appendectomy. Years later she married a farmer in the district, and they were very much in love, but she couldn't seem to get pregnant. Finally she went back to the city to find out why she couldn't get pregnant, and she was told that she had had a hysterectomy, at which point she went home and opened a bottle of Armstrong and Hammer lye and mixed it up with some water and drank it. And killed herself.

"That is a story that I had been told since I was a girl, and I knew the husband, so that when I came to write...I mean, it's always bothered me, it's something I knew I'd have to deal with one day. I mean the whole...the Catholic Church. She was obviously sleeping with the priest, and I couldn't figure it out. I thought he would have to have had some kind of legal support to do a thing like that, so I started looking into the statutes on sterlization and they're horrific. B.C. was bad, but Alberta was unbelievable. In Alberta you could be sterilized--and by that they meant hysterectomy--for the transmission of evil, and evil was loosely defined as anything from pauperism to alcoholism, to feeble-mindedness. The figures are incredible, and this was not changed until 1971."

-from an interview with Betty Lambert

Bibiliography

Lambert, Betty. (1987). Jennie's Story & Under the Skin. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press.

Filmography

Heart of the Sun, 1998, 94 minutes, directed by Francis Damberger, screenplay by Kim Hogan.

Cast

Christianne Hirt Jennie McGrane

Shaun Johnston Harry

Michael Riley Father Ed

Merrilyn Gann Edna

Eric Johnson Jack

Jessica Carmichael Molly

Graham Greene Ol'Billy

Mark Anderako Orderly Swanson

Clara Hare Nurse Shields

Jeremy Hart Dr. Finney

Judith Haynes Nurse Cross

John B. Lowe Train Conductor

Arianna Marsden Girl

Paul McGaffey Man #2

Bill Meilan Higgins

Milissa Mihalcheon Nurse Needle

Wendell Smith Man #1

Production Credits

Francis Damberger Director

Kim Hogan Producer/Screenwriter

Brenda Liles Executive Producer

Sydney Banks Executive Producer

Betty Lambert Play Author

Peter Wunstorf Cinematographer

Simon Kendall Composer

Lenka Svab Editor

Ken Rempel Art Director

John Danylkiw Producer

Shaun Johnston Co-producer

Wendy Partridge Costume Designer

Shane Conelly Sound Designer

Ian Emberton Sound Editor

Tony Wyman Boom Operator

Craig Wallace First Assistant Director

Pierre Tremblay 2nd Assistant Director

Katherine Ringer 3rd Assistant Director

Bette Chadwick Casting

Russell Gray Casting

Robin Swiderski Set Decorator

Rosemarie Diekmann Key Hair Stylist

Prudence Olenik Key Makeup Artist

Andrew Moreau Assistant Art Director

Kirk Jarrett Stunt Coordinator

Isabel Bloor Set Costumer

Dana Dube Animal Trainer

Kim Goddard-Rains Production Coordinator

Kenneth Hewlett Camera Operator

Corey Jones Script Supervisor

Karen Redford Location Manager

Grizz Salzl Assistant Camera

Poster featuring a woman with red hair promoting "Jennie's Story".
The poster is for a play called 'Jeannie's Story', presented by Starlight Theatre. It features dates August 4-7, 1993, at 8:00 p.m. at the Waterloo Community Arts Centre, 25 Regina St. S., Waterloo. Ticket prices are $10 and $8. The poster includes information about tickets and contact details for the Waterloo Stonebridge Box Office.
Book cover titled 'Jennie's Story & Under the Skin' by Betty Lambert, featuring a black-and-white photo of three women, two seated and one standing.
The image shows a poster for a theatrical play titled 'Jennie's Story' presented by the Sun Farlour Players at the Community Theatre. The play is scheduled for February 6, 7, 12, and 13 at 8:15 p.m., and February 14 at 2:15 p.m., at the Leamington Arena Auditorium. Admission costs $2.50 for adults and $1.50 for students and seniors, with a matinee price of $7.00.
Photograph of an elderly man with white hair, dressed in a dark suit and tie, displayed in a frame. The frame has a sign reading 'Chalmers Canadian Play Award 1985'.
Book cover for 'Jennie's Story' by Betty Lambert featuring a silhouette of a girl's profile
Two women in a cafe, one is seated and the other is standing, engaged in a conversation.

Andy Maton & Donna White

The ticket for 'Jennie's Story' at The Waterfront Theatre on Granville Island, dated October 27, 1981, 8:30 pm, reserved seat B14.