About the Play:

HARD TO FIND BOOK, only a very limited number of copies are still available.

The volume Rock 'n Rail contains two one-act plays by Mansel Robinson. A rare combination and tour de force, Spitting Slag and Ghost Trains is a double-whammy of poetry and theatre. The plays are in the voices of the workingman: to the tradition of Billy Bishop Goes to War, add poetry, politics and pathos. Received to acclaim on the Canadian Fringe tour, they have rocked audiences with their tough, poetic hard rock mining and railroad rhythm.

Spitting Slag is a political drama about an injured and angry hard-rock miner. Meet Floyd. He's a drug- and alcohol-dependent paraplegic victim of a mine cave-in. Floyd's son died in the same accident. Or was it an accident? Floyd is angry. Floyd wants justice. Floyd wants revenge. Floyd has, as they say, issues. With live music. (Cast: 1 male, plus one male or female musician).

Spitting Slag premiered in 1998 at Harvest Hall in Meacham, Saskatchewan, and was subsequently produced at The Globe Theatre in Regina, 25th Street Theatre in Saskatoon as well as the Winnipeg and Saskatoon Fringe Festivals. The play won a five-star review and was held over as winner of the Audience Choice Award at the Saskatoon Fringe Festival.

What people say:

"Spitting Slag is a gripping, intelligent, fierce and moving tale, beautifully performed (Robert Benz) and eloquently written – and one of the best pieces of theatre ever to hit the fringe. Ever. An amazing journey from hate to love, punctuated by sex and bad jokes and all the terrible mistakes made in every stratum of society." — Saskatoon Star Phoenix

Ghost Trains is a country/roots cabaret tribute to railroads and railroading life. An ailing father, an outlaw son, the romance and the poetry of the railroader's life – and death. With songs by Stewart MacDougall. (Cast: 1 male, plus one male or female musician).

Ghost Trains won four and five-star reviews in 2001 at the Winnipeg, Saskatoon and Edmonton Fringe Festivals as well as the Audience Choice Award at the Saskatoon Fringe Festival.

What people say:

"This play stinks – of grease, of diesel fuel, of a thousand miles of steel and memories. Dougie McCrae, train man, gives a eulogy for his dad and for trains in the bargain, and by the time he's done, you'll weep for both ... pure transcontinental magic ...." — See Magazine

About the Playwright:

Mansel Robinson is a Canadian playwright and fiction writer. He has written numerous plays which have been produced in Ottawa, Montreal, Kitchener, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina, and Calgary. Robinson has been writer in residence at the Berton House in Dawson City, the University of Windsor, Regina Public Library, and the Surrey Public Library. He has also worked in a lumber mill, fought fires, ran a blast furnace, worked the rails, and done a lot of backstage work at theatres. A twenty-year resident of Saskatchewan, he now lives in a small cabin down-river from his hometown of Chapleau, in Northern Ontario.