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<\/a>Leiren-Young, now an established screenwriter, journalist, filmmaker, and playwright, got his career started as a cub reporter in Williams Lake and was immediately thrown into a small town beat that included its share of crime and controversy.<\/p>\n
The one-man play, starring Zachary Stevenson in Vancouver and Duncan and Ryan Biel in Kamloops and directed by Vancouver theatre mainstay TJ Dawe, combines scenes from the book with new material that Leiren-Young was able to collect after the book was published.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll of my favourite lines in the play are not in the book, and a lot of them I didn\u2019t know about when I wrote it,\u201d says Leiren-Young. \u201cSo, suddenly, we have these new little anecdotes that weren\u2019t in the book.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dawe, now a veteran of the stage with over 100 productions under his belt, found the process of taking Leiren-Young\u2019s book to the stage to be a \u201chuge learning experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn many ways it’s been an education in the difference between literature and the stage. Some lines work great as punchlines in the book, but not on stage,\u201d explains Dawe. \u201cEven after a full house with a standing ovation on opening night in Kamloops, we’re still meeting to see what we can tweak to make it even better, and usually that hinges on the difference between what works in the book and what’s coming across to a live audience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another realization for the crew has been that the story still resonates with so many people in the Williams Lake area. Now that Leiren-Young is detailing the lives of small town folk onstage, the audience has included some familiar faces, especially in Kamloops, where it\u2019s just a short trip down the highway from Williams Lake.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne example is the parents of the woman who was robbed at the Mohawk at knifepoint in the book were there on opening night. That freaked me out,\u201d says Leiren-Young. \u201cAnd they came up and said, \u2018Hi, it was our daughter who was robbed by the guy with the paper bag over his head,\u2019 and I\u2019m just bracing myself. Turns out they loved the book and the play.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dawe says he immediately identified with the story when he read it. He knew early on what parts of the book he wanted Leiren-Young to include, as well as his desire to focus the story on Leiren-Young putting himself on the line to form a union at the newspaper. \u201cTJ is astonishing,\u201d says Leiren-Young. \u201cI can\u2019t stress how much this play comes from him beating me up. He just said, \u2018Look, I\u2019ve read the book. This is the storyline I think we should go with. Here\u2019s the ending I think we should look at.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a story about a guy who comes to a small community that he’d never heard of, he has big-city disdain for the place, and has no intention of staying. And, in spite of himself, becomes so attached to the people and the place, that he puts himself on the line for his coworkers,\u201d says Dawe. \u201cI told Mark that that seemed to be the heart of the story. And it hit home with me, because that’s a long-standing journey in my life: the resistance, even resentment, toward any sense of community, and the gradual embracing of that exact need in myself.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stevenson, who stars as Leiren-Young in the Vancouver and Duncan runs and spent a lot of time mirroring the author\u2019s mannerisms while learning the story, says working with Dawe and Leiren-Young was a thrill for him. \u201cI’ve been a fan of TJ since I was a student at UVic. And I have such respect for Mark as a writer. It really is a dream team and great mentorship experience for me,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Watching Stevenson and Biel bring his experiences to life has been \u201ckind of mind-boggling\u201d for Leiren-Young. One particular scene where he has a panic attack due to the stress of being a cub reporter in a extremely quirky and sometimes dangerous small town became all too real for him while watching the play.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a flashback to that moment, pretty heavily,\u201d explains Leiren-Young, \u201cand I\u2019d forgotten how intense that was until I watched it being acted out on opening night.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite still having many friends in the area, and living close to Williams Lake for about six months after the book was written, Leiren-Young says he\u2019s not exactly aching for another long-term residency in the town that has given him so many great stories.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet\u2019s just put it this way,\u201d he says, \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019m born to be there, but I\u2019m really happy to visit.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mark Leiren-Young had his life changed when he moved to Williams Lake, BC in 1985 for a job as a newspaper reporter. Leiren-Young\u2019s award-winning 2009 book Never Shoot a Stampede Queen has now been adapted to the stage, so his adventures from that time are flooding back again. \u201cThe wildest part is this is like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6894,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6893"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6919,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6893\/revisions\/6919"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}