The Production

Interpreting the Space

In the original vision of the space, the PUC building was not the first choice for the workshop. The first choice was the old Kable building nearby. We know that a relative of Edna's worked at the business and an old clipping of the building is in the archive. The building most recently was a bridal shop, which also appeared to represent Edna. She was married three times, a prominant feature for a woman of her time, and wedding photos exist in the archive.

However, due to financial circumstance, the PUC building became the more practical choice. In recent years, it was a bank, likely the National Trust. A bank is a place where valuables are kept for safekeeping, and also a place of money. At first glance, the concept of the space as a bank resonanates with Edna's Archive itself, since the archive is certainly like a bank containing Edna's valued moments (photographs, postcards, beer labels). But the possible relationships between the space and the archive are endless...

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The Director's Vision - The Value and Safe Keeping of Edna Bear - Andy Houston

Perhaps we understand ourselves relative to the things we accumulate, the pictures we take, the souvenirs we keep, the writing we save, the material traces we acknowledge. History is composed of documents because the documents are all that remain. But what if such remains are lost, or nearly lost, as was the case with Edna Bear? Is this person’s history of less value? Do we simply forget them, or is there something important to learn from our relationship to the nearly lost - in ourselves, in others and in our city?

This project began about a year ago with a class of dramaturgy students, who were asked to research what Edna Bear had left behind. The class had an array of responses to the assignment: some were fascinated by the history they found, some could relate to her aspirations - to perform, to entertain, to have a good marriage, to escape her hometown and travel the world, and some could care less. After all, what remained of Edna’s life was found in a cardboard box by a dumpster, wasn’t it? Some in the class thought ‘who cares about this woman and all of her photos?’ They wondered if all of her stuff wasn’t just garbage.

At this point, I thought it was important to identify Edna’s materials as an archive, and I did so out of respect for her memory, but also because the idea of an archive is troubling when we consider its social and historical place in a community. The Greek root for ‘archive’ is a reference to the house of Archon, the head of state, or the mayor of the city. How can the formal housing or display of memory shape a community’s sense of the past? Questions of value arise concerning what is chosen for display and what is left out. How do these choices create a kind of architecture of social memory, a memory that demands visible or materially traceable remains?

When the offer came to stage Edna Bear’s archive in the PUC Building, it seemed as though our questions and concerns about the worth of the archive were effectively magnified through this site and its place in downtown Kitchener. Both the building and the neighbourhood have experienced abandonment and reclamation; both are places of dreams and difficulty, and in the shadow of City Hall, each space finds itself in a complicated negotiation of value. In this building with a history of utility and safe-keeping, perhaps we can secure a sense of a woman’s identity in relation to our own; in absence of an officially sanctioned archive for her things, perhaps we can offer her something better: a home in our hearts and imaginations.

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Creating the Music - Meghan Bunce

A song is an archive of memories. The emotions that arise from hearing a beloved tune are often overwhelming. Every night during our run, I have the pleasure of bringing voice to some of Edna’s memories and, quite possibly, some of your memories, as well.

A single musical score was found in Edna’s Archive, a score for The Esquire Waltz. Named after a popular café in Montréal, the waltz is a very commercial piece. There are numerous photographs of Edna at the café. This song was clearly filled with memories for Edna.

In approaching the incidental composition for the play, The Esquire Waltz figured prominently. After playing the waltz only a few times, I left the piece untouched for a week, and began to write portions of the melody by memory, fantasizing and concocting variations from what I could recall of the work. Warped by time and imagination, these melodic fragments are but faint echoes of the original piece. They are shards of the waltz. The shards are performed throughout the play, both vocally and on the clarinet. Each shard develops into a leitmotif representing the voyeurs’ responses to the archive material.

Memories of period-specific works are also scattered throughout the score. They are never performed in their entirety; they, too, are shards. The vocal pieces were learned through aural transmission rather than standard notation and are testaments to our musical memories.

Extra Notes:

One of the musical pieces heard in Edna's Archive is the Walper House Rag, which makes its first appearance in the section "Scenes as they might have been: Tap Dance Tomorrow". Joseph F. Lamb wrote Walper House Rag around 1903; the composition was likely named after the Walper Terrace Hotel in Kitchener, Ontario (Scotti 1977:34). As far as it is known it is a piece of Lamb which was unpublished. The notes are in a glass case in the hotel. You can find an audio of the entire piece at the Ragtime Press, Song #145.

The Esquire Waltz, sung first in slow time by Miroki Tong, and then with lyrics by Meghan Bunce in the show, was found in Edna's archive. This was likely a common piece of music during Edna's years spent at the Esquire Café, Montreal.

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