For many rural teens, the highway running past their home is a one-way road leading out of town after graduation.
The lure of the city has captivated a generation of teens. Fewer young people seriously consider the farm a career option these days.
But 14 high school students from Beechy, Sask., challenged that mindset.
They scripted and produced the play
It’s Not The End Of The World But You Can See It From Here”, a witty and provocative look at rural teenagers and the farm as a good place to grow up.
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“It really opened my eyes to what we actually have in rural life,” said Allissia Hanke, 17, one of the actors. “You realize in small communities, family goes further than the people you’re related to.”
The play, a series of vignettes on rural life delivered to urban and rural audiences across Saskatchewan, garnered the prize as best play at last year’s provincial drama festival and earned two outstanding ag ambassador awards for teachers Glenda MacFarlane and Karen Richardson.
“We had a branding scene … the kids played the livestock. We had a scene about a hockey player who didn’t have a team to play on because there weren’t enough kids in his age group. We had a major scene about what it’s like to ride on a bus for a long time,” MacFarlane said.
Actor Daniel Flynn, 17, got to talk to city teens when the group toured the province and said he learned something of city life too.
“We may look different but we do a lot of the same things,” Flynn said, “like partying.”
In fact, the scene that proved most controversial for Beechy’s 250 residents showed teens drinking alcohol.
“Some people thought we shouldn’t be showing that. That by showing it, we were condoning it,” MacFarlane said. “If you’re going to do a play about what their lives are like, you have to put that in, because it’s a big part of their lives in a lot of cases.”
While MacFarlane thinks the play reminded teens there is a strong rural sense of community that is not found in cities, she acknowledged many don’t understand the message until they’ve left.
“When I was 17, I got the hell out of here as fast as I could and I’m back,” MacFarlane said. “But when you’re 17 years old, it’s claustrophobic, it’s not exciting. You’ve been here your whole life … the world is way more interesting somewhere else. But when you get a bit of perspective on it, you can see the good things about living here too.”
