Prairie Nurse

By Marie Beath Badian

Prairie Nurse, which premiered at the Blyth Festival, is a comedy about two Filipino nurses who come to work at a small-town Saskatchewan hospital in the late 1960s. Cultural clashes, personality differences, homesickness, and the amorous but dim-witted goalie from the local hockey team complicate the women’s lives. Based on the true story of her mother's immigration to Canada, Badian's play is part romantic comedy, part farce, and part cultural history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scirocco Drama
• Release date: Jul 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781990737572

Marie Beath Badian

Marie Beath Badian is an award-winning Filipinx Canadian playwright based in T’Karonto (Toronto, Ontario, Canada). Her plays include Prairie Nurse (The Blyth Festival), The Waltz (Factory Theatre), The Best Friend Blanket Fort Show (Young People’s Theatre), The Making of St. Jerome (Next Stage Theatre Festival), Mind Over Matter (Convergence Theatre), and Novena (UnoFestival Victoria). She is the recipient of the 2022 Playwrights Guild of Canada Drama Award for her play Common: A Trilogy. Marie Beath is a two-time alumnus of the Banff Playwrights Lab. She has developed work in the playwright units of Cahoots Theatre Company, Tarragon Theatre, Soulpepper Playwrights Circle, and Factory Theatre. She was the playwright-in-residence at fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre Company, Project:Humanity, and the Blyth Festival. www.mariebeath.com

Book preview

Cover: Prairie Nurse by Marie Beath Badian, published under Scirocco Drama, by J. Gordon Shillingford, shows a worried nurse speaking to a man with a rifle, as another nurse standing behind talks to him.

Prairie Nurse

Marie Beath Badian

Prairie Nurse

first published 2017 by

Scirocco Drama

An imprint of J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing Inc.

© 2017 Marie Beath Badian

Scirocco Drama Editor: Glenda MacFarlane

Cover design by Terry Gallagher/Doowah Design Inc.

Cover photo: Lana Carillo, Michael Torontow, Sarah Cornell.

Blyth Festival 2013. Photo by Terry Manzo.

Author photo by getting captured photography

Printed and bound in Canada on 100% post-consumer recycled paper.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Manitoba Arts Council and The Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, for any reason, by any means, without the permission of the publisher. This play is fully protected under the copyright laws of Canada and all other countries of the Copyright Union and is subject to royalty. Changes to the text are expressly forbidden without written consent of the author. Rights to produce, film, record in whole or in part, in any medium or in any language, by any group amateur or professional, are retained by the author.

Production inquiries should be addressed to:

[e-mail]

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Badian, Marie Beath, author

Prairie nurse / Marie Beath Badian.

A play.

ISBN 978-1-927922-31-6 (softcover)

I. Title.

PS8603.A33442P73 2017C812'.6C2017-900710-6

J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing

P.O. Box 86, RPO Corydon Avenue, Winnipeg, MB Canada R3M 3S3

For Mom.

A black and white photograph of the author Marie Beath Badian, smiling. She is dressed in a jeans coat over a dark top, and her dark, thick hair is let loose.

Marie Beath Badian

Marie Beath Badian is a Toronto-based playwright, performer, director and arts educator. Her plays include The Making of St. Jerome (Next Stage Theatre Festival, nominated for three Dora Mavor Moore Awards) Mind Over Matter (part of AutoShow, Convergence Theatre) and Novena (UnoFestival Victoria, Toronto Fringe Festival.) Her radio work includes Yellow Rubber Boots (CBC Out Front) and an adaption of Novena (CBC Radio, The Drama of Immigration).

Marie Beath was Playwright-in-Residence for fu-Gen Asian-Canadian Theatre Company (2008–2009) and Project: Humanity (2010–2011). She was a member of the 2010 Hothouse Playwright Unit at Cahoots Theatre Company, 2011/2013 Tarragon Playwright Unit, 2015 Soulpepper Playwrights Circle and the 2016 Factory Theatre’s Natural Resources work creation group.

Marie Beath spent two seasons as Director of the Blyth Festival Young Company, two seasons as Co-Director of Youth Programs at Nightwood Theatre, two seasons as Associate Artistic Director/Associate Artist at Theatre Direct Canada, and five seasons as the Program Director for the Play Creation Unit at Carlos Bulosan Theatre.

Acknowledgements

The development of this play was made possible through the generous support of the Blyth Festival’s Roulston Roy New Play Development Fund, and the Ontario Arts Council. The play received formative development through Theatre Passe Muraille’s Buzz Festival and Cahoots Theatre Company’s Hothouse Playwright Unit.

I am eternally grateful to Eric Coates for championing the seed of this story even before I knew it was a play. My sincerest gratitude goes to Peter Smith, Deb Sholdice, and the cast, creative team and crew at the Blyth Festival. A very special thank you to Sue Minr for her patience, cheerleading, and above all, friendship. Thank you to all the wonderful actors who workshopped the play during its development. Maraming salamats to Caroline Mangosing and Darrel Gamotin for the Tagalog translations.

Thank you to the wonderful people in Saskatchewan who shared their stories and opened their hearts and homes to my mother and me in 2007—Helen and Tim Soucey, Patricia Hackett, Marie Anne Lussier, Charlie Govenlock, Rose Welchman, and Penny Ong.

To my family and extended family—Hugo Badian-Parker, Rudy Badian, Allan Badian and Gina Cervini, Jim and Wanda Parker, Lynda and Duncan McGregor and Jesmen Mendoza—thank you for your unwavering support, wisdom and guidance. To Paul Parker, thank you for creating the Arborfield Flyers’ Big Play, for being my sounding board, my sanity and my partner on this adventure of ours.

Lastly, thank you to my mom, Concepcion Saberon Badian. In 1967, you took a chance on a place called Saskatchewan. Because of you, we are here.

Playwright’s Notes

This is a fictional play based on real-life folks. My mom immigrated to rural Saskatchewan from rural Philippines in 1967. She came to be a nurse in a small community hospital. She stayed in Saskatchewan two years before moving to Toronto.

In September 2007, I took my mother back to Saskatchewan—on the fortieth anniversary of her arrival in Canada. We returned to the village where she was stationed—Arborfield, Saskatchewan—a tiny farming community, population 300.

To our surprise, many of the people that knew Mom were still there—other nurses and people who lived and worked in the community. And the first thing they would say when they saw Mom was, Where’s the other one?

Who’s the other one?

Her name is Penny. She was the only other Filipino nurse assigned to Arborfield. We had not planned to see her, as my mother rarely spoke of her, except to say that Penny didn’t seem to want to be there. Though both their contracts were for two years, Penny stayed just shy of a year, moving away shortly after sponsoring her fiancé’s emigration from Manila.

On a whim, I typed Penny’s name into the SaskTel search engine and found her in Saskatoon. On the day we were scheduled to leave Saskatchewan, we sat down with Penny in an airport café. She was short, sweet and grey-haired. And she looked very much like