Robert Chafe: Two Plays

Butler's Marsh and Tempting Providence

Robert Chafe

• Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
• Year: 1999
• Print ISBN: 9780887547225
• eBook ISBN: 9780369103246
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Drama
• Index: Literature

Butler's Marsh

Thirty years ago Nora's mother disappeared into the small, dense forest of Butler's Marsh. She emerged three days later, covered in blood, badly shaken, and completely silent about what had happened. Having never been offered a suitable explanation, and now finding herself at her own moment of crisis, Nora ventures to Newfoundland for the first time to explore Butler's Marsh for herself. She is accompanied by her partner Tim, who, while less than helpful, is nevertheless adamant that she not be left alone. But as Nora's night in Butler's Marsh unfolds, and Tim's good humour wanes, the primary question of what happened to her mother quickly becomes less troubling than another; with whom exactly is she lost in the woods?

Tempting Providence

In 1921 Myra Grimsley signed a two-year contract and boarded a steamship from London, England, to St. John's, Newfoundland. Her charge: to serve as the sole health-care provider for three hundred miles of the sparsely settled coast of Newfoundland's Great Northern Peninsula. By the time her contract ran out two years later, Myra was married to local Angus Bennett, and had given birth to their first child, Grace. Based on the true story of Nurse Myra Bennett, Tempting Providence is a play about duty and sadness, love and change. Four strong characters drive this no-frills drama about a young British nurse who only signed on for two years, and the local man for whom she stayed for seventy.

Tempting Providence

— • — Notes —•—

Like most of my generation, I knew very little about Nurse Bennett when I was approached to write her story. Sadly, I never learned about her in school, and legends of her heroics were isolated to those in the nursing profession, residents of Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula, on the province’s west coast, and lucky chance visitors to Bennett House in beautiful Daniel’s Harbour. Much research filled my desk with Nurse Bennett’s 60 years worth of staggering work, 60 years worth of potential material. As I condensed the material I found most of what I was interested in exploring revolved around Myra’s first years in Newfoundland, and the awkward transition period between life in London, England, and life in Daniel’s Harbour, Newfoundland. Nurse Bennett’s records and diaries offered much, but strangely absent from all findings was a solid basis for dramatic conflict. As Angus says, “She was a thoughtful woman, and a private one.” As a result, much of what exists in this text in terms of what “she was thinking” is extrapolation. Talk of loneliness and unhappiness are examples of my artistic license, and, though well supported, are fiction.

Tempting Providence was created to be a quickly-paced, simple, and smooth play based upon a story that was anything but; Nurse Bennett’s true life story is one hundred years long, and rich in content that was neither simple, nor, most times, smooth. The hope is to illuminate a telling section of this personal history in a way that is not simply biographic, but also highly theatrical.

Tempting Providence was commissioned by Theatre Newfoundland Labrador in 2000, and was premiered at their Gros Morne Theatre Festival in Cow Head, Newfoundland, in June 2002. It was subsequently remounted and co-presented with Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland in St. John’s, Newfoundland, in December 2002, with the following company:

MYRA Deidre Gillard-Rowlings

ANGUS Daniel Payne

MAN Peter Rompkey

WOMAN Melanie Caines

Directed and Design Concept by Jillian Keiley

Stage Managed by Karla Biggin

Set Construction by George Cammie and Walter J. Snow

Lighting Design by Walter J. Snow

Costume Design by Barry Buckle

Production Management by Diana Haynes

The play was again remounted in ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Intoduction
• Butler’s Marsh
• Tempting Providence
• About the Author