What I Did on My Summer Vacation
- Kathy Coudle-King
- 18 minutes ago
- 7 min read
Summer is officially over next week, even though schools are back in session, Labor Day weekend is in the books, and Oktoberfests are in full swing. So, it seems I better chronicle my summer vacation before it's too distant in my rearview mirror.
It's been three weeks since I returned from our (Theatre without Walls) Fringe Fest tour. It's taken me this long to process this event and will probably take even longer to uncover the lessons learned.
First, what is a Fringe Fest?
Fringe Fests take place across the U.S. and around the world. Two years ago I had the good fortune to attend the Mama of all Fringe Fests with my partner, Alan; my friend Debra; and my high school theatre teacher, Naima Perry (very special!). We went to Edinburgh. It all started there in 1948 (check me). The Edinburgh Fringe Fest has grown to be one of the largest Fringe Fests in the world with. more than 4,000 productions.
But, again -- what is a Fringe Fest?
It's a multi-day, sometimes multi-week event where indie theatre makers bring their work and perform it for audiences who go from show to show -- bingeing on theatre -- if you will. Shows typically run around 1-hour and are bare-bones productions. Artists try out new plays, or tour a show they've always wanted to perform. Content can be serious or whacky, it can be improvised and immersive. It can involve puppets or clowning. It's truly a smorgasbord of theatre. You can read the descriptions in the programs, but you never really know what you are going to get -- from rough to polished and messy to inspiring. And that's what a Fringe Fest is all about.
The Fringe Fest Bug I attended my first Fringe about 33 years ago in Winnipeg. I was hooked and returned numerous times but not nearly enough over the years. As a writer/director I had it in the back of my mind to bring a show to a Fringe, but it was not until I met Ashley Fredricksen, also a lover of all things Fringe, that I began to believe this was something I might be able to do. Ashley and her partner Jace Erickson encouraged me to apply to Fringes. In 2023, I applied to Winnipeg and the Minneapolis Fringe, but did not win a spot in the lottery. Then in 2024, my friend Barb Whitlock in Indiana suggested I submit to the Indy Fringe, and Ashley mentioned the Kansas City one. I ended up submitting to lotteries in Winnipeg, Minneapolis, KC, St. Louis, Omaha, and Indy, getting into Omaha, St. Louis, and Indy. (We were 317 on the Minneapolis wait list -- which actually opened up in August but we were already set for our tour).
What to Fringe?
Last fall, when I applied for these festivals, I knew I would bring a new play. Something to do with my research at the Jamestown State Hospital in Jamestown, ND. I'd stumbled upon old log books from the earliest years of the hospital, and I wanted to see if I could find out the stories of the patients in the logs. When I discovered that so many died at the hospital and were buried in the hospital cemetery, the tragedy of their lives deepened. I felt compelled to tell their stories. But what were their stories? Surely, there was more than their eye color and if they were constipated. Diagnosis were sketchy, treatment limited, and there were few details to develop into characters. Challenge accepted.
Who Showed Up I decided to focus on characters who might be representative of different types of mental illnesses. I selected Thomas McLaughlin, a Cavalry officer, to represent PTSD. McLaughlin was in the Civil War and at Little Big Horn. Because there is so much written about Little Big Horn, I decided to create a monologue for him around that event. As we say, his piece "wrote itself." (Josh Widmer was cast to play him and did the part justice. Josh had to attend a wedding, though, which took place during the Indy leg, so Dean Whitlock stepped up to take on Josh's roles.)
Reading the hospital's biennial reports, kept at the UND Chester Fritz Library, I learned that at one time there were patients from more than 18 different countries under care. I tried to highlight the trauma of immigration with the naming of some characters from Sweden, German, and Norway.
I discovered a brother and sister from England. There was not much to go on in the logbooks, but the records did reveal a brother with a messianic complex and a sister who thought she was the landlord. I leaned into my Brit Box bingeing for the rest. (Juliet Wolfe was cast to play Jane and Josh/Dean played King James.)
Mary Johnson was a patient who thought she was Mary Lincoln. (Juliet played a scary Mary.)
Peter Spbuya was one of the saddest cases. He was a Native American man who was sent from an Indian Boarding School to a hospital in Yankton, then transferred to Jamestown. Peter Spbuya was not his real name. I hope someone digs into his case and maybe his bones can be repatriated by his tribe. (Jace Erickson shared "Peter's" story.)
I also discovered on the Find a Grave website a woman who committed infanticide, prompting me to include the imagined story of a son whose mother suffered from mental illness and the impact on the entire family. (Jace played the son.)
Another heartbreaking story was that of Kate Flynn. According to her records, she adopted many different names during her 30 years at the hospital. In the end, though, she did know herself to be Kate Flynn and begged to be released. She is buried in the cemetery. (Juliet gave a powerful performance of Kate that left me in tears every single night.)
Finally, there was Bengta. Bengta's gravestone reads Bessie Huff. I was first introduced to her on the Find a Grave website, not in the logs. Following up on the name of a relative who left a remark on the website, I was able to find the heart of my play. Four women met me for lunch in Fargo and shared their findings about their great-grandmother who had been all but lost to history. It's a tragic story through and through, but the family gave me permission to use it in my play. They attended the performance in Grand Forks, and additional relatives attended in Indianapolis. Book-ending our Fringe Tour this way was a kind of affirmation that all the work, all the time, all the financial costs were worth it. (Mary Aalgaard played Bengta in our production and used her own Swedish heritage to inform her portrayal.)
In early readings of the play, one hosted by the Dramatist Guild, I was encouraged to develop the role of Claire, the one doing the research at the hospital. Originally, Claire was just a pseudonym for me, but I wasn't interesting enough, I guess. So, I developed a backstory for a Ph.D. student who is ostensibly writing a dissertation but is actually looking to find out what happened to her great-great grandmother. (Ashley Fredricksen, my Fringe muse, played this role and brought heart to it.)
I need to wrap up but may revisit this blog at another time; however, right now I am feeling so fortunate, so privileged, to have had the support from friends, family, community, and the ND Council on the Arts who provided me with an Artist's Fellowship to complete the research for this project. I am grateful to Central Lakes College, the Empire Arts Center, Omaha Fringe, St. Louis Fringe, and Indy Fringe for the opportunity to share a glimpse with others of what it might have meant to be a patient at a state hospital for the mentally ill at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Their stories were not told, or if they were it was in a whisper, and now a few hundred people have heard them. Maybe these characters who were real people will be remembered. Maybe their stories resonated with audience members who will share them with others. Maybe mental illness in families will be spoken about instead of erased from family archives. Maybe more people will see mental illness as the tragedy it is and not as a stigma.
The fact is, we are not much further along in treatment of mental illness as they were in 1895 when the Jamestown Hospital opened in Dakota Territory. No, we don't immerse people in ice baths, but electro shock is still sometimes used. We don't remove patient's teeth, though, thinking cavities are a source of mental illness. But there is still so much we do not understand. More research, more funding is clearly needed. One thing we can do right now is to stop blaming the patient and start blaming the illness.
So, while I did not take a big trip to Scotland this summer, I took another kind of trip. The souvenirs I brought home are imprinted on my psyche as a writer and theatre maker. They are a renewed conviction that I have a role to play and that role is to share the stories of those who cannot speak them their selves. I may not be telling them on a professional stage in a major city. My audiences might be 4 -24 people. But I'm telling these stories because -- well, because I have to.
Our Fringe play was called There's Something I Must Tell You. I do not know who must hear these stories, but I met people who did. A woman in Omaha who showed up just to share the death certificate of her great-grandfather who died at the Jamestown State Hospital in the 1930s. Bengta's great-great-great granddauthers who "met" their ancestor in person for the first time via the performance of an actor. We told these stories for the young man who pulled me aside after a show in St. Louis and revealed he was a patient in a psych ward once. He told me without hesitation. He told me because he knew I would not stigmatize him. He told me because he felt seen and not judged.
No, my summer vacation wasn't a trip to Disney World, but it was indeed magical.
GF Herald article by Pamela Knudson
Comments