ALTO the play

The play’s the thing”, Shakespeare wrote in one of his fam­ous lines that live forever.

As sug­ges­ted by the Bard, when a threat, con­di­tion, or phe­nomenon has fully entered the pub­lic con­scious­ness… it becomes cul­tural!

That’s what has happened almost overnight with the ALTO high-speed rail plan to dis­sect farms, nat­ural pre­serves, sum­mer play­grounds and com­munit­ies across rural East­ern Ontario as it bar­rels its way at a cost of $90 bil­lion from Ott­awa to Toronto via Peter­bor­ough.

The plan is being opposed in every pos­sible way includ­ing peti­tions, ral­lies, and refus­als to cooper­ate with fed­eral gov­ern­ment-backed ALTO agents.

And now there’s a play about the fiasco, an ‘Ori­ginal Com­edy of Chaos’ called ‘Spectres & Speed Trains’ writ­ten by the owner of a pop­u­lar Rideau Lakes music, munchies and biker hangout, Tao-Lynn Carr who believes the arts always reflect what’s at the heart of a com­munity.

Singer-song­writer Carr’s main busi­ness is Bas­tard Cof­fee House, not a state­ment about any­body asso­ci­ated with it, but a reflec­tion of the pre-amal­gam­a­tion name of the muni­cip­al­ity,

Bas­tard & South Bur­gess.

She gets a lot of credit for reju­ven­at­ing down­town

Delta, par­tic­u­larly for buy­ing and refur­bish­ing a sec­tion of the Jubilee Block of store­fronts where the cof­fee house is loc­ated.

Carr is a mem­ber of Rideau Lakes Play­ers which has staged sev­eral per­form­ances of her play in Delta and nearby Elgin, vil­lages known for their his­tory and charm.

No other per­form­ances are sched­uled at the moment, said pro­du­cer Chris Whitty, not­ing there have been approaches from other com­munit­ies about sta­ging it.

Rideau Lakes Play­ers is a novice ama­teur the­at­rical troupe with now three shows under its col­lect­ive belt. The object­ive, said Whitty who plays Perry in the pro­duc­tion, is to offer enter­tain­ing, ori­ginal shows, in an area where there isn’t a whole lot of cul­tural enter­tain­ment.

No one is paid and the troupe isn’t try­ing to build up a big bank account, but rather donate net rev­en­ues back to local causes. With Spectres, an aver­age of 60 people saw five pro­duc­tions at $25 a ticket which brought in $6,385 to be donated.

While there’s a dis­claimer that the 75-min. play is a work of fic­tion, the plot is pulled right out of ongo­ing ALTO head­lines… with the spectre of the title thrown in for extra comedic effect. It’s a cos­tumed crow played by Laura Steacy rep­res­ent­ing the real-life his­tor­ical fig­ure Eliza­beth Barnes, the stor­ied Witch of Plum Hol­low, serving as nar­rator.

The story unfolds at a town hall meet­ing where a par­tic­u­larly bel­li­ger­ent ALTO rep­res­ent­at­ive is try­ing to sell the high-speed concept to dubi­ous loc­als.

Much of the con­cen­trated East­ern Ontario oppos­i­tion to ALTO comes from Rideau Lakes with town­ship coun­cil vot­ing unan­im­ously against a high-speed cor­ridor through the region cit­ing envir­on­mental impact, com­munity dis­rup­tion and lack of busi­ness case.

Act­iv­ist group Rideau Lakes Against Alto has 3,400 fol­low­ers: “The Spectres story is sweet, funny and a little spooky,” said Rowan Brewer-Dudek of the Alto oppos­i­tion group.

Carr, who plays Dot, said she came up with the script as the Play­ers were search­ing for their next pro­duc­tion; it was fine-tuned by the col­lect­ive. She con­grat­u­lated her col­leagues for being so much bet­ter than the char­ac­ters she dreamt up: “You brought it to life!”

Carr allowed that the story line is “pretty anti-ALTO” although it does explore poten­tial bene­fits along with the cost. The play is designed in keep­ing with a more tra­di­tional ver­sion of live theatre and oral storytelling.

Carr sug­ges­ted that when social crisis is emu­lated in the arts it cre­ates another layer of how to under­stand and digest the con­flict.

I like to think that, while the play might not shift the debate, it does show­case the very real and social impact that such a train implies and helps give a voice to a pop­u­la­tion that doesn’t always get heard.”

BY TOM VAN DUSEN, Farmer