In the wake of her Governor General’s win, playwright Caleigh Crow is ready to take flight
iPhoto caption: Photo by Kelly Osgood.
When the Governor General’s office announced the 2024 nominees for its prestigious Literary Awards, playwright Caleigh Crow was fast asleep.
“I’m a sleeper-inner, so I woke up to all these texts from friends,” said Crow in an interview. The Calgary-based Métis playwright would go on to win the 2024 Governor General’s Award for drama with her play There is Violence and There is Righteous Violence and There is Death or, The Born-Again Crow. The script is available through Playwrights Canada Press.
“I still don’t know how to talk about it,” she said. “I read through some of the other recipients in my cohort, and also all the [winners and nominees] before me… It’s affirming to feel like I can stand with some very talented and impactful people.”
Crow’s play takes a kitchen-sink premise to a surreal and startling conclusion. Its heroine, a young woman named Beth, has been fired from her minimum-wage job at the Superstore following a violent public breakdown. When the play begins, Beth has moved back to her mother’s house in a rapidly gentrifying suburb. The days ahead promise unbroken monotony — until a talking crow arrives in the backyard.
An isolated Beth bonds with the mysterious bird. She begins to put out an ever-increasing number of feeders for the neighbourhood’s crows, drawing the ire — and aggression — of the wealthy homeowners’ association. How, Crow’s play asks, does that aggression differ from a worker’s act of rebellion? And how does that act of violence differ from the day-to-day violence of a minimum-wage job in retail?
“I [write] a lot about working,” said Crow. “I’ve always tried to have a very class-conscious approach to my work and my writing.” In There is Violence, “I wanted to put into words this alienated feeling of [being] a body that stocks shelves,” she continued, “and if I have needs, or if I have mental illness, or if I have a grievance, that’s not what [bosses] are interested in cultivating.” She noted that retail and service jobs aren’t “seen as a career, even though — especially — women, and women of colour, raise families on these kinds of jobs.
“The vibe goes out of the room when you talk about, like, the plight of the working person,” she laughed. “Everyone’s like — yawn! I just wanted to make [this conversation] interesting and exciting, and also bring a supernatural, magical realism to it.” For Crow, the uncanny corvid who befriends Beth in the play “awakens in [her] the ability to change and transform…. How do we break through cycles and take control of our lives? Even if circumstances mean we can’t not work at the grocery store, in what ways can we take full ownership for ourselves, as human beings?”
How did Crow the writer find herself writing Crow the character? Despite the symmetry, the playwright wasn’t inspired by her last name. Crow said she began to write There is Violence after reading a newspaper article about “this little girl who was feeding crows. It started out as one feeder, and then it became more and more and more.” In crafting the play, Crow aged up the protagonist from a child to an adult. She also modeled the play’s suburban setting on the northeast of Calgary, where she grew up. The northeast “is known for being kind of an industrial area,” said Crow, “but also as being where working class and immigrant families tend to live… My neighbourhood was the edge of town for a long time. [Houses] weren’t like the farmer McMansions I think of today. I feel like, in the writing of [There is Violence, Beth is] even a little bit further removed, and the suburbs coming to her was her experience growing up.”
There is Violence first left the nest in 2019, when it premiered at the Motel Theatre in Calgary. Crow and her brother, Colin Wolf — the current artistic and executive director of Gwaandak Theatre in Whitehorse — produced, co-directed, and performed in the play through the company they co-run, called Thumbs Up Good Work.
“I’ve relied on [my brother] since the very beginning,” said Crow. “He was such a great sounding board for every idea, every draft, every scene.” Crow explained that she wrote the role of Beth’s fantastical feathered friend “for my brother, knowing that I wanted him to perform it.” Like the crow in the play, Wolf is “that person that lets me know that I can do it,” she said. “He’s a fire sign, so that’s what that is. He’s all about taking action and taking control.”
On the other hand, “I’m an Aquarius, so I live up here,” she joked, pressing her hands to her temples.
In the wake of the Governor General’s Award, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and Native Earth Performing Arts are staging the Toronto premiere of There is Violence. The new production, which begins previews March 9, is directed by Jessica Carmichael. The cast features Tara Sky as Beth, Madison Walsh as the Crow, Cheri Maracle as Beth’s mother Francine, and Dan Mousseau as Tanner, Beth’s ex-boyfriend and the boy next door.
“When… I was talking to [artistic director ted witzel], he said ‘we want to really emphasize the design in the show,’” Crow explained. “That’s something we definitely lacked [in the premiere production].” Buddies has assembled a dream team in this regard: set design is by Shannon Lea Doyle, costumes are by Asa Benally, lighting is by Hailey Verbonac, and sound is by Chris Ross-Ewart.
“I’m just so excited,” said Crow, “because when [my brother and I] produced it I thought that, maybe, that was the end of the journey. I’m really seeing now that it was just the beginning” — especially given the career momentum generated by her Governor General’s win.
“I was like, ‘guess I better get back to writing,’” laughed Crow. “It was something that I’d [taken] a little break from for a lot of reasons.” She said the award was like “a message from the universe saying, ‘Yeah, dude!’
“It’s something that does encourage me a lot,” she continued, “but it also gives me something to live up to. It gives me some skin in the game and some responsibility, which I think, at this stage in my career, I feel ready for. I want to rise to the challenge of it.”
The text of There is Violence and There is Righteous Violence and There is Death or, The Born-Again Crow is available in paperback and as an ebook via Playwrights Canada Press.
The production at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre runs from March 9 to 29. Tickets are available here.
Nathaniel Hanula-James
Nathaniel Hanula-James is a multidisciplinary theatre artist who has worked across Canada as a dramaturg, playwright, performer, and administrator.
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