IWA HELPS
FINANGE
LOGGERS’ PLAY

Will loggers go to the theatre to see a play
about loggers?

Island Stage, Vancouver Island’s new
theatre company, thinks they will, and the
International Woodworkers of America and
the CLC are backing them up.

The play is Highball!, a powerful drama
with sprightly music that deals with the
lives of loggers in the 1920’s and 30’s on
Vancouver Island.

It played in Vancouver last November,
when the Sun hailed it as “‘a better piece of
nostalgia than Paper Wheat and Ten
Lost Years”, two plays about the thirties
that toured Canada to great acclaim.

Wayne Edmonstone, the Sun critic,
praised the show for its honest portrayal of
loggers. ‘““They are (and are touchingly
played as) the sort of tough, stubborn,
sometimes violent, mostly sentimental,
always crude, and fundamentally decent
men that built this province with their
muscle and blood — while a “better class” of

people did their logging in board rooms and
club cars.”

AFFECTION AND WIT

“The show tells their story with affection
and wit and no whining at all. And that’s
the way the men themselves would want to
have it.”

Many who saw the play’s five-week run
were wood workers, retired loggers, and
people connected with the union movement.
Their response was overwhelmingly favour-
able, and a tide of interest arose in a tour
that would bring Highball! to logging
communities on Vancouver Island.

Ronald Weihs, the author and director of
the play, joined with Lindsay Bourne and
Christine Thomson, two of thoseinvolvedin
the original production, to form a new
theatre company based at the new 730-seat
Cowichan Theatre in Duncan, and produce
an Island tour of the play.

They got in touch with Roger Stanyer and
Ken McEwan of local 1-80, who were excited
about the idea, and agreed to support the
new company before the Regional Council.
McEwan came onto the theatre company’s
Board of Directors, where as Secretary-
Treasurer, he keeps an eye on the company’s
financial dealings.

NEW THEATRE COMPANY

The IWA Regional Council and the CLC
stepped in with the money to get the produc-
tion underway. Their sponsorship has not
only been crucial in reviving Highball!, but
has been instrumental in creating an excit-
ing new theatre company concerned with
issues that affect working people.

“T consider this a real breakthrough,”
Weihs says. “And not just for ourselves. If
the money for theatre comes only from
business and government, then the theatre
produced is going to be irrelevant to the
ordinary person. This begins to create a
balance.” ;

“Tsland Stage won't forget that it owes its
existance to the labour movement. Our side
is that we have to create plays that working
people will respond to and enjoy.”

The play concerns a Swedish rigger, Nels,
who befriends a greenhorn from Winnipeg
and helps him get through the first few
crucial weeks on “the Haywire side of the
most haywire camp on Vancouver Island.”
The greenhorn survives, though he col-

IWA members Ed Dubas, Local 1-357; Klaus Offermann, Local 1-405 and Lonnie Swenor, Local 1-217, are shown with Julien
Major, executive vice-president of the Canadian Labour Congress (third from left) following their graduation from the Labour
College of Canada.

lected the name “Steambucket’ as a little
reminder of a joke the men play on him.

They work hard, but they play hard too,
until the coming of the depression closes
down most of the smaller camps. Nels and
Steambucket wander up and down the
island, looking for whatever work they can
find, until an accident splits up the partner-
ship.

The play’s powerful climax takes place in
the Grand Hotel in Vancouver’s Gastown.
Allan Twigg, critic for the Vancouver Free
Press, describes the finale:

“Whereas it’s alright for Paper Wheat to
end with quaint old-timers surveying their
pasts together on a nursing home porch,
Highball! must conclude in the barroom of
a cheap hotel where a pervasive atmosphere
of bitterness clings to the logging exiles
present as inescapable as stale cigarette
smoke.”

“The resultant finale is not pretty. It’s not
something to celebrate. But it succeeds as
highly responsible, entertaining and
socially relevant theatre.”

These are the years that saw the first
breakthroughs in the unionization of
loggers. Throughout the play, from the old
Wobbly talk of Whitey the bullcook through
secret meetings with union representatives,
the partners are reminded that the alterna-
tive to the state of affairs around them is
organization.

The last scene takes place on the eve of the
historic wage conference in Vancouver in
January, 1934, and the legendary Ernie
Lindborg is there to help turn the anger of
the men into constructive channels. There is
no preaching or proselytizing, nor does
there need to be; the history of what comes
after the close of the play speaks for itself.

Most of the songs in the original produc-
tion were withdrawn by the composer for his
own use. Weihs, who has toured as a fiddler
with a country rock band, has written new
songs, and integrated them with his script.

Some of the original cast, including Klaus
Werner as Nels, Juergen Beerwald as
Steambucket, and Susanne Puttonen as
Shelly, are returning, but there are a few

new faces — two of them from the Cowichan
Valley.

One of the newcomers is Andy Mathison,
who has been a logger himself, and is just
finishing up a stint as Canadian observer
on the Japanese and Soviet fishing fleets.
He has acted at Malaspina College, and
writes and publishes poetry about working
people and their concerns.

Jake Galbraith, who plays the hook-

tender, is a versatile singer and musician,
known for his appearances in clubs in the

Valley.

Photo by Photo Features Ltd.

Highball! plays in Duncan at the Cowi-
chan Theatre on November 21 and 22, and
then hits the road up Island to Yellow Point,
Port Alberni, Ucluelet, Parksville/Quali-
cum, Campbell River, Courtenay, Powell
River, Port McNeil, Kelsey Bay, Gold River,
and Gabriola Island.

DELEGATES
CONDEMN
BGRIC INVESTMENT

Regional convention delegates showed
their disapproval of BRIC’s purchase of
Kaiser shares by approving an emergency
resolution which called on Premier Bill
Bennett to immediately convene the B.C.
Legislature and enact means to safeguard
the assets of BRIC shareholders.

The resolution pointed out that the assets
formerly held by all British Columbians,
and accumulated by the prudentinvestment
policies of the NDP government have been
placed in jeopardy by a series of disastrous
moves, culminating with the Kaiser pur-
chase fiasco.

ERIC WOOD
WINS NEW
APPOINTMENT

Erik Wood, long-time financial secretary
of Local 1-367 Haney, was recently
appointed a member of the Boards of Review
dealing with compensation claims.

Following the announcement of his
appointment, the Local asked him to attend
the annual meeting where he was presented
with a plaque and automatic shotgun in
appreciation for his years of dedicated
service to the membership.

All Erik’s friends wish him well in his
new job.

Lumber Worker/October, 1980/1 1