A definitive Canadian play, one of the region's most successful theatrical creations ever staged, is having a birthday.
The play is about remembrance itself. It was conceived on an auspicious occasion, performed a decade later at the same historical commemoration, and this weekend it gets its own anniversary. Jake's Gift turns 10 with performances Friday and Saturday evening on the very stage on which it was invented, the Sunset Theatre in Wells.
"I can hardly believe it has been 10 years since I did that first staged reading of Jake's Gift at The Sunset," said playwright and sole actor Julia Mackey remembering how it all began.
"I'm so grateful to Karen Jeffery (owner of the Sunset Theatre) for giving me that deadline all those years ago. I remember I was working in Barkerville as one of the street interpreters back in the summer of 2005. We had just finished a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream a few days earlier, which Karen had seen, and she approached me and told me all about the Sunset and her idea to launch a new play series the following summer. She asked me if I would be interested in presenting something, and I said, 'Yes, I have something I've been meaning to finish.' She gave me a deadline for August 2006 and that was that."
That was that for the writing process. The performance process has been nothing short of breathtaking for a play. The story Jake's Gift tells is of a Second World War vet who reluctantly returns to Juno Beach decades after the war to find the grave of the brother who never came home. It is also the story of the little French girl who meets him there.
Mackey performs both parts, seamlessly transitioning from one character to another as the tale unfolds.
When Jake's Gift was performed in Prince George during the Canada Winter Games cultural festival, done at the local branch of the Legion with Lt. Gov. Judith Guichon and other officials in attendance, there wasn't a dry eye in the house by the end of the show.
The play has been seen in more than 200 communities across Canada, plus spots in the Unites States, the United Kingdom and continental Europe. Since then, thousands of people have seen the show, and no more than two years has gone by since it was first unveiled that Mackey and the play haven't won a major theatre award for Jake's Gift.
The most touching of these performances may well have been at Normandy where Mackey staged the show on the spot that inspired it so many years before.
She was in attendance during the 60th anniversary events of the D-Day allied offensive, and her scribe's heart was inspired by the veterans she met there and the places that brought history to life in her eyes. It was those people and places, knotted up in her notebooks and her thoughts, that Mackey meant by "something I've been meaning to finish" when Jeffery queried her about having a play ready. So once it was finished, and tested on many audiences, she was moved to go back to Normandy two years ago as part of the 70th anniversary commemorations of that pivotal battle for Canada and the world. It was there she performed it like no other time before or since.
"Never did I imagine ten years ago that we'd get the chance to perform Jake's Gift, en franais, on the shores of Juno Beach," she said. "We were able to share Le Cadeau de Jake with the locals of Bernires-sur-Mer and the surrounding area of Juno Beach. It was a dream come true."
Now it crosses its own threshold of time, and on it's own commemorative spot. The shows on Friday and Saturday happen at 7:30 p.m. at the Sunset Theatre. Tickets are $15 and can be reserved by calling the theatre at 250-994-3400 or buy online at www.sunset-theatre.com.
"It has been an incredible 10 years, and it all began here in Wells. We hope people will come out and help us celebrate," she said, on behalf of her partner and the play's director Dirk Van Stralen.
The two of them have opposite plans of slowing the play down, now that it is 10 years old.
"As 2017 will be our 10th anniversary year and Canada's 150th birthday year, we are making it a goal to perform Jake's Gift 150 times this year, and if we succeed we may just get to our 1,000th performance," Mackey said.
