St. Bernard - Gas Girls

Gas Girls Copyright 2011 by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard Foreword Copyright 2011 by Yvette Nolan Playwrights Canada PressThe Canadian Drama Publisher 215 Spadina Ave., Suite 230, Toronto, ON, Canada M5T 2C7 phone 416.703.0013, fax 416.408.3402 No part of this book, covered by the copyright herein, may be reproduced or used in any form or by any meansgraphic, electronic, or mechanicalwithout the prior written permission of the publisher, except for excerpts in a review or by a licence from: Access Copyright 1 Yonge St., Suite 800, Toronto, ON M5E 1E5 phone 416.868.1620 For professional or amateur production rights, please contact: Angela Rebeiro, Kensington Literary Representation 34 St. Andrew St., Toronto, ON M5T 1K9 phone 416.979.0187, email Cover photo Keith Barker Cover and type design by Blake Sproule Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication St. Bernard, Donna-Michelle Gas girls [electronic resource] / Donna-Michelle St. Bernard. A play.

Type of computer file: Electronic monograph in EPUB format. Issued also in print format. ISBN 978-0-88754-968-7 I. Title. PS8637.A4525G37 2011b C812'.6 C2011-901205-7

Playwrights Canada Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and of the Province of Ontario through the Ontario Arts Council and the Ontario Media Development Corporation for our publishing activities. To Brenda, an inspiring friend/fan/teacher/mom, and to my three favourite boyfriends.

When Donna-Michelle accepted her award for Outstanding New Play at the Doras, she told the audience that Gas Girls was part of a 54-ology, a series of plays about Africaone for each country. She got a huge laugh, but she wasnt kidding. Donna-Michelles vision of the world includes Africaall of Africaas well as a number of other geographies including Toronto, paradise, and high school. Gas Girls started, the story goes, after Donna-Michelle read about women along the Zimbabwe border who traded sex for gas. From that scant story were born Gigi and Lola, who trade Love for gas Gas for cash Cash for living Living for love. One of the girls is fast, one is slow, and Gigi, the quick one, the clever girl, teaches Lola, the slow one, how to survive.

The age of our heroines, mere teens, makes their situation that much more distressing. The play begins with a game of patty cake that evolves into a step dance, insisting the audience remember that these girls are just that: girls; girls barely out of childhood, girls who should be in school, who should be dreaming of the future. From that moment of innocence and freedom the play carries us into the reality of their lives. Gigi, the elder at nineteen, serves as Lolas mother and madam, teaching her about condoms and the onset of her menses; about how to stay alive; whether, how, and where she services her clients; and how to prepare cassava. Gigi, at only nineteen, is also caring for her amai, who is bedridden and dying. In spite of the grim circumstances, Gas Girls is hopeful; at times breathtakingly, achingly hopeful, allowing audiences a glimpse of redemption for at least one of the girls.

The women love. They love each other, their families, their very lives. They dream too, telling each other stories of better places, better times, of Sometime when they go to school, marry, have children, and are loved. I have read many of Donna-Michelles plays in many stages of development (not all, because she is preternaturally prolific), but the first time I read Gas Girls I was enchanted. The world of Gigi and Lola, of Chickn and Mr. Man, is so vivid and so compelling that I cared about the characters long after the last words on the last page.

As writers we are told to write about what we know. Donna-Michelle started writing the 54-ology before she ever set foot on African soil (though she has begun her pilgrimage now with trips to Mozambique, Uganda, and Kenya), but the continent is in her blood, and in her heart. Donna-Michelle has an overdeveloped sense of justice, but her plays are never didactic. Quite the opposite, they are often oblique beyond easy explanation. Her plays bloom miraculously on the journey from the page to the stage, which is what good theatre does. They are theatre pieces; they live fully in the voices of the characters, served by the voices of actors, those magicians of the theatre.

And she is writing about what she knows, about injustice, about the hierarchy that leaves women with so little power. She knows what women will do to survive, to feed and shelter their families. She knows that even love gonna kill you, you needen it too much. Donna-Michelle knows about the cost to women, to mothers, to the great metaphorical mother, Earth, of the way we are living. Its in this way her Africa plays, indeed all of her plays, speak to us, whether we live in an urban Canadian centre or a dusty Zimbabwean border town; they demand we look at how we treat each other, how we care for each other, or dont care for each other, in the most dire of circumstances. Yvette Nolan, 2011

Characters speak in a dialect unique to this play as opposed to one derived from a specific geography.

Words ending in en indicates an elastic sense of word tense. For example, You looken young = You look young (present), What you getten, these? = What are you going to get for these? (future), They given you something? = Did they give you something? (past). Gas Girls was first produced by New Harlem Productions at the Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace in November 2009, with the following cast and crew: Peter Bailey: Mr. Man (Henry) Jamie Robinson: Chickn Nawa Nicole Simon: Lola Sodienye Waboso: Gigi Director / dramaturge: Philip Adams Set and costume designer: Jackie Chau Lighting designer: Michelle Ramsay Sound designer: Nick Murray Stage manager: Stephanie Nakamura Gas Girls was the recipient of the 2009 Enbridge playRites Emerging Playwright Award, the winner of the 2009 Herman Voaden Playwriting Award, named Outstanding New Play at the Dora Awards, and nominated for three other Doras, including Outstanding Male Actor for Jamie Robinson, Outstanding Female Actor for Nawa Nicole Simon, and Outstanding Set Design for Jackie Chau.