Lac/Athabasca

By Len Falkenstein

Stories are carried like cargo on trains from the Rocky Mountains to the East Coast in this cautionary tale of what happens when we’re haunted by the hunger for the ever-greater development and exploitation of natural resources.

A nineteenth-century fur trader and his Métis guide are harrowingly pursued by an unseen monster on the Athabasca River. Two freshwater biologists in present-day Fort McMurray investigate pollution downstream from the oil sands, until one becomes obsessed with his discovery of a centuries-old skeleton. A young man comes to work in the Alberta oil sands, but is driven home after discovering the body of a missing co-worker. The residents of a small town unite in grief after an entirely preventable disaster. Stories intersect and echo, connecting the dots between voraciousness and victimhood, beasts without and beasts within, and ravaged landscapes and ruined souls.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
• Release date: Mar 12, 2018
• ISBN: 9781770918863

Len Falkenstein

Len Falkenstein is Director of Drama at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, where he teaches theatre and playwriting and directs productions for Theatre UNB. He is also Artistic Director of Bard in the Barracks, Fredericton’s outdoor Shakespeare company, and NotaBle Acts, a developmental theatre company that stages an annual festival of new plays by New Brunswick dramatists. His plays, which have been staged with his company Theatre Free Radical at Toronto’s SummerWorks Performance Festival and at Fringe festivals and other locations across Canada, include Soft Target, Utopia, Doppelgänger, and Free/Fall.

Book preview

Lac/Athabasca

1.

In the darkness, the sound of a large diesel engine, and then the sound of wind.

A projection that reads Athabasca appears briefly.

Lights come up on

ben

, a tour guide, on the Athabasca glacier in Jasper National Park. He is holding an empty clear plastic water bottle.

ben:

And here we are! Sorry about all the bumps on the last part of the ride there. I swear I’m licensed to drive that thing! Leastways, they keep giving my licence back for some reason. I know, cold, innit? Zip up those coats! It may be a balmy twenty-two degrees down at the base of the glacier, but up here it’s only five centigrade and that icy wind you’re feeling whips around pretty much all the time.

Ladies and gentlemen, not only have we ascended 1,200 metres on our trip up, we’ve also travelled back in time. The ice you’re standing on right now is thousands of years old, and over three hundred metres thick. Quite a view, innit? Up there, just over that ridge, is the rest of the Columbia Icefield. Three hundred and twenty square kilometres, nothing but ice as far as the eye can see. Whatta ya say we hike on up, have a look around? Just kidding! ’Cause of course the glacier’s filled with dangerous crevasses that are almost invisible and can swallow you up just like that. (snaps his fingers) One-way elevator straight down five hundred feet to five thousand years ago, which is why we have to insist that you stay within the marked area. (tone darkens) ’Cause if you don’t follow the rules, like this guy I had in my group last week . . . well, let’s just say we went back down with one less person than came up . . . (quick shift) Ha ha, just kidding!

Pause.

But it is tempting, innit? Whenever I’m standing here looking up there . . .

Beat.

Did you all bring an empty water bottle with you, like I said? Come on over here, to this little meltwater stream. Go ahead. Reach down and fill them up. It’s the oldest, the purest water you’ll ever taste. Go ahead.

He reaches down with his water bottle and fills it, then holds it out towards the audience.

Drink.

As the lights fade, he places the bottle of water on a small, short plinth on the edge of the stage. The bottle remains there, lit, until it is used again some scenes later.

2.

A projection that reads Lac appears briefly.

phil

enters holding a small model train kit building. It’s the type of commercial building found in a small town’s downtown, and is lit from within.

phil:

We decided to head downtown, go for a drink. I wasn’t really in the mood, eh? But Denis says, Come on, Phil, it’s Friday night, we need to go for some beers. And besides, Sherry-Anne’s going to be there. And I know what you were saying about her the last time you got a bit loaded. And Thierry’s going to be there, too, just got back from Alberta. How long’s it been since you saw him?

When he called me I was up at the lake. There’s a trail where you can look down over the water and the town’s there in the distance. And it was so beautiful that day. Surface of the water totally calm, so the sun, the clouds, the old buildings downtown . .