Half-Cracked: The Legend of Sissy Mary

By Mary-Colin Chisholm

Sisters Sissy and Yewina have been on their own for who knows how long exactly. It's just them (and their hens) in a weathered farmhouse miles from town. Their rural, woodsy East Coast community has been losing residents for years, but the almost-forgotten stories have lived on for the sisters in different ways. While Yewina is more guarded and level-headed, dreamer Sissy has a flair for twisting fact with fantasy. When Scott, a folklorist from Scottsdale, Arizona, shows up at their door in hopes of chronicling whispers, he's in for much more of a story than he expected. This unique and quirky ode to folklore storytelling and to small lives lived large illuminates how living our own truths can make us legends.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
• Release date: Jul 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9780369104076

Mary-Colin Chisholm

Mary-Colin Chisholm has written or co-written a dozen plays and more sketches than she can shake a shtick at. Her plays have had multiple productions across the country. Recent work includes Shadows in the Cove: The Notorious Life and Calamitous End of Dr. Henry Inch, A Belly Full (with Marcia Kash), By the Dark of the Moon (with Christian Murray), To Capture Light, and He’d Be Your Father’s Mother’s Cousin. Whenever she can she lives in a shack by the sea in Jimtown, Nova Scotia, where there’s nothing to do and she’s more than happy to do it.

Book preview

Cover: Half-Cracked: The Legend of Sissy Mary by Mary-Colin Chisholm. The cover is a painting by Holly Carr called Love Dory. A mermaid is curled up in a red row boat with a man. The mermaid has long flowy blue hair, green and blue scales, and a tail fin. The man is wearing a yellow rain coat and is bald with a beard. He has his eyes closed and his arms around the mermaid while she looks towards him. The boat is floating in the middle of the sea.

Half-Cracked

The Legend Of Sissy Mary

Mary-Colin Chisholm

Playwrights Canada Press

Toronto

Copyright

Half-Cracked: The Legend of Sissy Mary © Copyright

2023

by Mary-Colin Chisholm

First edition: July

2023

Printed and bound in Canada by Rapido Books, Montreal

Jacket art, Love Dory © Holly Carr

Author photo © Christian Murray

Playwrights Canada Press

202-269

Richmond St.

W

., Toronto,

ON M5V 1X1

416.703.0013

| [e-mail] | www.playwrightscanada.com

No part of this book may be reproduced, downloaded, or used in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for excerpts in a review or by a license from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca.

For professional or amateur production rights, please contact Playwrights Canada Press.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Half-cracked : the legend of Sissy Mary / Mary-Colin Chisholm.

Names: Chisholm, Mary-Colin, author.

Description: First edition. | A play.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print)

20230183670

| Canadiana (ebook)

20230183778

|

ISBN 9780369104069

(softcover) |

ISBN 9780369104076 (EPUB)

| ISBN 9780369104083 (PDF)

Classification:

LCC PS8605.H73575 H35 2023 | DDC C812/.6—

dc

23

Playwrights Canada Press operates on land which is the current and ancestral home of the Anishinaabe Nations (Ojibwe / Chippewa, Odawa, Potawatomi, Algonquin, Saulteaux, Nipissing, and Mississauga), the Wendat, and the members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora), as well as Metis and Inuit peoples. It always was and always will be Indigenous land.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council (

OAC

), Ontario Creates, and the Government of Canada for our publishing activities.

Logo: Canada Council for the Arts.Logo: Government of Canada.Logo: Ontario Creates.Logo: Ontario Arts Council.

Dedication

To my siblings, Corinne Cameron and Chris Chisholm, two great storytellers. Thanks for all my best lines.

And to the jerks in junior high who nicknamed me Hen. Thanks for the resilience.

Epigraphs

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.

—George Eliot, Middlemarch

All babies are beautiful, especially the homely ones.

—Kathryn Danny Kirk Chisholm

Production History

First presented as Sugar Mary & Yewina in a staged workshop by LunaSea Theatre in Kjipuktuk, Mi’kma’ki. It was presented at

KAZAN CO-OP

’s Waiting Room, Agricola Street, Halifax,

2016

, with the following cast and creative team:

Sugar Mary: Margaret Smith

Yewina: Mary-Colin Chisholm

Scott: Christian Murray

Director: Martha Irving

Dramaturge: Jackie Torrens

Stage Manager and Choreographer: Ryanne Chisholm

The second staged reading was at Eastern Front Theatre’s

2016

STAGES

Theatre Festival, at Deep Water Church, with the following cast and creative team:

Sugar Mary: Margaret Smith

Yewina: Ryanne Chisholm

Scott: Christian Murray

Director: Martha Irving

Choreographer: Ryanne Chisholm

Production Manager: Gina Thornhill

The world premiere was on March

13, 2018,

at Neptune Theatre’s Scotiabank Stage, Argyle Street, Halifax, as Half-Cracked: The Legend of Sugar Mary. It was a co-production between Neptune Theatre and Eastern Front Theatre with the following cast and creative team:

Sugar Mary: Geneviève Steele

Yewina: Sharleen Kalayil

Scott: Christian Murray

Director: Martha Irving

Assistant Director: Jacob Planinc

Stage Manager: Ingrid Risk

Set Design and Painting: Holly Carr

Technical Assistance and Builder: Garrett Barker

Sound Design: June Zinck

Lighting Design: Ingrid Risk

Author’s Notes

Sissy and Yewina are not blood relatives. If they are of different ethnicity, when Sissy is wondering if Daddy or Mom had her after an affair, Yewina can reference the wedding photo and add an Uh, not likely. Scott has slight Indigenous ancestry, but no lived experience or recognized nation affiliation. He would see himself as a generic American. When Scott talks about his parents the text can be tweaked to fit the actor, e.g., My mother is half-Norwegian, half-Nigerian. Or, My dad came to Arizona State on a full golf scholarship from Bangalore. His background can be unlikely—the whole play is unlikely.

The dialogue is partially written colloquially, e.g., whaddya for what do you. It’s meant to be a general nudge in the direction of my eastern Nova Scotia roots. Please don’t be religious about it. Sissy’s word mangles aren’t consistent but that’s just her. When people speak simultaneously, I’ve put them on the same line. I’ve indicated overlaps with the slanted line ( / ). Ellipses ( . . . ) can signify trailing off or switching thoughts. Dashes ( — ) are cut-offs. It’s not an exact science. You can use or lose f-bombs as you like, or as your audience tolerates. You can substitute f-bombs with friggin’, frackin’, gee dee, jeezly, etc. Beag is pronounced bek, and is Gaelic for little. Mor is pronounced more and means big. Yup can be spoken on an inhale.

Sissy Mary and Yewina’s house is cheery, full of odd bits and bobs and not terribly tidy with lots of spiderwebs. There’s a cot (or sofa) by the stove, with old quilts and pillows. Nothing is newer than thirty years. It lives in current time and yet in its own time and timelessness.

Some objects that are used or referenced include: