HARRIS, Sask. – Beth Robertson and Elaine Kowpak are sitting in a room at the back of Robertson’s house in Harris, watching a videotape of a recent performance of their musical, The Pull of the Land.
One of the characters, a farmer named Anthony, has just misplaced his gloves for the third time, generating howls of laughter from the audience. But Robertson and Kowpak, who wrote those lines a year ago and have heard them in rehearsal countless times since, are also laughing as they watch the television. At one point, Kowpak has to wipe tears from her eyes.
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The two retired teachers are obviously delighted with what they have accomplished – a full-length play that sold out its Harris dinner theater dates in March and again in Rosetown, Sask., in early June and Kindersley, Sask., at the end of June.
“People have written in to say, ‘you made us laugh and you made us cry and you captured the spirit of Saskatchewan,’ ” Robertson said.
“We were quite overwhelmed when we started getting written responses.”
Both women had chosen to spend their careers in front of the blackboard rather than on the stage, but became known in Harris as the people to turn to if a funny poem or song was needed for a special event.
Ten years ago, local residents decided to organize a festival celebrating the Ruby Rush, a 10-day mining frenzy that engulfed Harris in 1914. They needed a play and turned to their local poets for help.
Robertson and Kowpak, who were close friends, were intimidated by the thought of writing a long play, but when someone suggested seven 15-minute vignettes that could be performed at various locations in town, the duo figured they could do it.
Their vignettes were performed at Harris’s annual Ruby Rush Days until the festival was discontinued.
At the same time that the vignettes were being written, Kowpak joined the local dinner theatre, first as an actor and then director. Two years ago, when the theatre decided to tackle a musical, Kowpak recruited Robertson.
By this time, the friends had also started a small business creating floral arrangements using dried flowers, grain and wild plants, which took them to craft shows across the Prairies.
“We had lots of road time to talk things over,” Kowpak said.
One of their topics of discussion was a couple of songs Robertson had written about Saskatchewan. It wasn’t long before they were talking about a full-blown musical about life in rural Saskatchewan.
They got down to business last summer, dedicating Monday nights for writing.
“Some nights were dry and some nights midnight came too early,” Kowpak said. The fact they had never written a play before never struck them as a problem.
“We sort of always worked under the assumption that if nobody tells you you can’t, you can,” Kowpak said. “We didn’t think it would be a problem, so it wasn’t.”
Robertson wrote four more songs and gradually a story developed about a young man who returns home to help his parents with the harvest and wrestles with the urge to permanently return and take over the farm.
The women were able to draw on their personal experiences when portraying farm life.
Kowpak, who grew up in Kindersley in western Saskatchewan, left the farm when she was five, but said her father was always deeply interested in agriculture.
Robertson grew up on a farm in southwestern Saskatchewan and married a farmer from Harris. Her husband died a few years ago, but she still helps out on the family farm when needed. Their research also took them to Harris’s coffee row, where they listened to the conversations. As well, they drew on friends’ experiences, such as struggling with bad water.
“And some we just made up,” Kowpak said.
Besides accomplishing a personal goal, they also wanted to give their home province a boost.
“We’re both strong, strong Saskatchewan advocates and we live here because we want to be,” Robertson said.
Added Kowpak: “Saskatchewan, somehow, has dipped into this inferiority complex, and we don’t need to. We don’t need to apologize for who we are.”
The show’s success has created an itch to see it performed again, but they have no immediate plans. The provincial government is considering one of their songs as the theme for Saskatchewan’s centennial celebrations in 2005, and the seeds for a sequel are germinating.
For now, they plan to take the summer off and bask in their success.
“Sure it was an accomplishment, but it was what we wanted to do,” Robertson said.
