Over my many years of involvement in community theatre one of the greatest joys for me has been sharing the stage with former students. Some of them even got their first taste of acting in my junior high drama classes. Never did I imagine, however, that I would someday act in a play written by one of them!

❤  This photo absolutely warms my heart. On my right, is my former student Kelly Berg, author of Silent Jim, in his lead role of Marshall Henry Jackson. Standing on my left, in the role of Jesse Longstrand, the blacksmith, is a young man I’ve known since he was a preschooler. I taught him Sunday School back in those days!

Silent Jim is a western murder mystery with a mix of intensely serious moments and hilariously funny ones. Thursday evening was opening night. We performed again on Friday and have two more shows next weekend. Our cast of 23 ranges from preteen actors trying out the stage for the very first time to seasoned veterans like myself.

Cast photo: Brenda Grove

I have a very small onstage role this year. In fact, I only have nine lines to deliver! Silent Jim is set in the small fictional town of Buffalo Skull in the American west in the late 1870s. In the original version, my character was a judge but, like any western, the play has a lot of roles for male actors and far fewer for females. We had to do a bit of adjusting. There were no female judges in the US in the 1870s, but the first female lawyer, Arabella Mansfield, was called to the Iowa bar in 1869. We could change our judge’s role to that of a lawyer and remain authentic to the time we were portraying. Our lady lawyer needed a name, however, and that’s an interesting side story.

One of the aspects of theatre that I absolutely love is the costuming, especially when we’re doing a period play. What would a lady lawyer have worn in the 1870s, I wondered. I turned to the internet in search of photos and as so often happens when I’m online, I ended up going down a variety of interesting and unrelated rabbit trails. One of them led me to an amazing find; my grandmother’s 1909 graduation photo from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia! 

Though the photo is apparently signed “Lizzie Walker. Dal. 09.” I know that Gran’s full maiden name was Eliza Clara Walker and that later in life she chose to use her middle name. Though hers wasn’t a law degree, there weren’t a lot of university educated women in her day and I thought it would be a wonderful idea to honour her memory by naming my character after her. My fellow thespians agreed and so I became Clara Walker, Esquire!

In addition to my small onstage role, I also act as prompter for the first three quarters of the play. I was surprised to discover that I really enjoy that position as I’m fully involved in every moment of the show.

Curtain call photo: Caity Moore, Clouded Creations