The Ballad of Ginger Goodwin and Other Plays: Two Plays for Workers

(Paperback)

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Two epic labour plays, based on true events, by the acclaimed author of Fado: The Saddest Music in the World.In The Ballad of Ginger Goodwin, discover how Canada got the eight-hour day and in Kitimat, visit the fastest declining town in Canada, whose residents are suddenly offered a deal by Big Oil. The plays, performed from Los Angeles, California, to Lisbon, Portugal, are the recipient of many awards, including the Mellon Foundation Environment Arts Commission, and Best New Play, Audience Favourite, Best Production Awards from the Victoria Fringe and Victoria Critics Circle.

The Ballad of Ginger GoodwinWith a cast playing everyone from a radical socialist to an Italian laundress to a scientist-industrialist, The Ballad of Ginger Goodwin is about the dreams of immigrants, coal and smelter workers in Canada and the Pacific Northwest, and the battle for workers rights. Featuring music of the period, including a new ballad by composer/activist Earle Peach, the play recreates the events surrounding the mysterious death of Albert Ginger Goodwin, who, through a strike at a Canadian zinc smelter in Trail, BC, brought the WWI British war machine to a halt.

Kitimat
Kitimat, British Columbia: an industry town in glorious wilderness finds itself the centre of international controversy when the town is asked to vote no or yes on an upcoming oil pipeline project. As election day approaches, the residents of Kitimat struggle to decide between economic prosperity or protection of the natural world.

The Ballad of Ginger Goodwin: Cast of 2 women and 3 men

Kitimat: Flexible, between 6 and 16 actors

Reviews

On The Ballad of Ginger Goodwin: Its been nearly a century since Albert Ginger Goodwin was shot and killed in the Cumberland bush on Canadas Vancouver Island, but thanks to people such as playwright Elaine Avila, the legacy of the workers rights activist wont soon be forgotten.
Cascadia Weekly

On Kitimat: Its a story as familiar to people in the US as in Canada a large corporation comes to a town where they want to develop or deliver resources and they promise work and money, a boom, if the citizens will let the corporation have its way.
National Observer

Author Bio

Elaine vilas plays are produced in Central America, Europe, the U.S., Canada, and Australia. Her Best New Play Awards include: Jane Austen, Action Figure (Festival de los Cocos, Panam City), Lieutenant Nun (Victoria Critics Circle), and Caf a Brasileira (Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon). Her most recent play, Fado, won the award for Favourite Musical in Victoria, BC. She has taught in universities from Portugal to Tasmania (lutruwita), China to Panama, and is the co-founder of the International Climate Change Theatre Action, involving fifty playwrights, two hundred venues, and twelve thousand audience members worldwide. A 2019 Fulbright Scholar at the University of the Azores, vila now lives in New Westminster, British Columbia.