Event:

Mother's Apron

  

Date:

Fri, Jul 19th, 2019

Time:

7:30 pm to 9:00 pm

Description:

The rollicking rarely-told story of Prairie women from 1886-1946 told through the portal of the apron worn by: a jilted mail order bride, a boarding house owner, a Metis woman, a Jesuit, a cowboy,a Woman's Land Army farmer, a female P39 pilot, and a soldier. You'll laugh you'll cry. Tea included.

Madonna Hamel has been writing and performing one-woman shows and making documentaries for over thirty-five years. After moving to a remote village in Saskatchewan she began collecting aprons- and the stories that came along with them.The result is Mother's Apron, Stories and Songs from the Apron Pocket Archives.

In her words: The apron functions as tool and toolkit, guard and shield, protective covering, warming and warning cloth, uniform, disguise, and habit. It is still seen by some as an indicator of class or education.

The apron is a potent portal to our changing perceptions of women and their place in the world. The earliest term for 'map' was 'napron'; and like a map Mother's Apron covers a lot of territory.

“Come Ye Citizens!”was the first story researched and developed for the monologue. It was inspired by promotional posters designed to seduce English emigrants to the Canadian West.

My performances look at the ways immigrant women coped with the huge disconnect between what they were promised and what awaited them upon arrival. As a soldier would don uniform to tackle the task at hand, so women tied on their aprons and transformed their rude dwellings into homes.

The stories in Mother's Apron range from those of new settlers in the late 1800s, to women returning home from their 'male' jobs post-WWII. Many felt cheated out of their brief new professions such as riveters, Land Army farmers and pilots. They were expected to willingly relinquish their new reality when the men returned and reclaimed their positions.

Before the war, aprons were made from flour sacks, as were clothes, towels, diapers and even men's undershorts. After the war, flour came in paper sacks and bread came uniformly sliced from the factory. The apron lost its bib and pockets and was transformed into a gauzy skirt called the cocktail apron, no longer a sturdy tool but a flimsy decoration.

One of the main characters in Mother's Apron is Marie-Ange, a Metis woman who teaches the main character, Maud, how to be a mid-wife, how to hear the voices of the plants and animals, and how to survive in the brutal wind, dust, heat and cold of the new land.

In short, she teaches Maud how to nurture her “wild side”. When Marie-Ange hisses: “We must keep them alive”, Maud soon relaizes “She didn't mean the baby, she didn't mean the child. She meant the buffalo. She meant the Wild.”

Venue:

702 Bernard Ave

Address:
702 Bernard Ave, Kelowna, V1Y 6P5

Cost:

$12

Ticketing and/or registration:

Click here for full event details

For more info:


306 772 0206

Sacred Agents Production

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