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Bolsheviki
Bolsheviki
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Author: David Fennario Publisher: Talonbooks (cover image may change) Format: Softcover # of Pages: 105 Pub. Date: 2012 ISBN-10: 889226873 ISBN-13: 9780889226876 Cast Size: 1 male
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About
the Play:
Bolsheviki is a
full-length drama by David Fennario. From
the renowned playwright behind Canadian classics Balconville
and Joe Beef, the
play tells the story of
First World War veteran Harry "Rosie" Rollins, as recounted
to a young reporter in a Montréal hotel bar on Remembrance
Day. Based on interviews the
playwright had with a First World War veteran years ago, Bolsheviki
is a tribute to battle-scarred
soldiers in the trenches.
Bolsheviki is
about a fictional World
War I veteran named Harry
"Rosie" Rollins. He
is interviewed by a young freelance reporter named Jerry Nines for a
piece the battle of Vimy Ridge, which saw over 10,500 Canadian
soldiers wounded and 3,600 killed. Rollins recalls his
experience in the trenches with
men pissing their pants, losing limbs, and planning a revolt
against their officers. The character of Rosie Rollins is based on
World War I veteran Harry "Rosie" Rowbottom, who was
wounded at Vimy Ridge. David Fennario taped an interview with
Rowbottom in 1979 in the old "King Eddy" Hotel in Toronto
over a bottle of Bushmills whiskey. Rosie's meandering monologue
delivers a blistering de-glorification of war as it shifts back and
forth between his wartime recollections and the present. The
veteran's clattering, fast-paced description of life – and death –
on the Western Front is light years away from the maudlin
sentimentalism of 'nation building' which often characterizes
conventional histories that deal with the experience of Canadian
troops in World War I. Jerry Nines links the struggle to stop the
First World War with the ongoing struggle to get Canadian troops out
of Afghanistan. Humour and passion combine to deliver a stunning
evening of theatre.
Bolsheviki premiered in 2010 at Infinithéâtre in
Montréal, Quebec on Remembrance Day. Well known and highly regarded
Canadian actor Robert King, a veteran of early Fennario plays
like On the Job,
was brought in to carry the monologue. A respected member of the
Stratford Festival (he has appeared in 22 of Shakespeare's 35 plays),
he resumed the role of Rosie when the production toured to Stratford,
Ontario the following spring.
Cast: 1 male
What people say:
"Bolsheviki is
vintage Fennario, gritty, authentic, touching, replete with one-
liners, never boring … making its radical-pacifist point while
paying due respect to veterans." — Montreal Gazette
"Tying Bolsheviki
all together is Fennario's determined de-glorification of war and
old-soldier nostalgia. He's still an unrepentant, hard-charging
leftie. A socialist, pro-worker, anti-war activist who, though now
confined to a wheelchair, has lost none of his dramatic edge, as
pissed off … as when he wrote On
the Job forty years ago." — Montreal
Mirror
"While Canadian theatre has
certainly portrayed the nation at war before, Bolsheviki's
perspective on the First World War, especially its often mutinous,
revolutionary final days, is unique, even among the history books."
— Hour
About the Playwright:
David Fennario is an anglophone playwright and a novelist
born David Wiper in Montréal. He grew up and still lives in the
working class district of Verdun-Pointe St. Charles, and zoomed from
obscurity to national fame in 1979 with his play Balconville.
His pen name, given to him by a girlfriend, was part of a Bob
Dylan song, Pretty Peggy-O. He worked in a number of small
jobs before he enrolled in Dawson College. With his teachers
encouragement, he developed and fine tuned his creative writing
skills. He was the first writer-in-residence at Montréal's Centaur
Theatre, has won the Chalmers award twice, and received the Prix
Pauline Julien from the United Steelworkers' Union.
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