For Ragini Kapil, devising and performing Delta Stageworks’ new show, Heirlooms & Baggage (My Mother’s Story), has been a transformative experience.
“I went in to document my mother’s life, to talk about my mom. I have great admiration and respect for what she’s done and what she’s accomplished in her life,” the retired educator and North Delta resident told the North Delta Reporter.
“But going through this process, something magical happened where I was able to separate myself from the relationship with my mom and look at this incredible woman. To make that shift from looking at my mom’s story — this is about my mom, which is still about you in a way; this is how your mom was, or how you might be reflected in her life, how her life is entangled with yours — and then to feel this sense of separation and to look at her and all of the things that she’s gone through and achieved as a woman in her own right, it was very eye-opening and powerful.”
Created by Kapil and fellow Delta Stageworks member Camryn Chew, Eric Keenleyside, Renee Iaci and Peg Christopherson, with dramaturgy by Marilyn Norry, Heirlooms & Baggage celebrates the extraordinary lives of five ordinary women — the mothers of the five diverse cast members.
After earning rave reviews from audiences during both its workshop performances at KinVillage in Tsawwassen back in February of 2023 and debut production at Ladner’s Genesis that October, Delta Stageworks is bringing the show to North Delta Feb. 12 and 13, before touring to ArtSpring Theatre on Salt Spring Island.
“People tell us how moved and transformed they are by the play,” Delta Stageworks artistic lead (and Heirlooms cast member) Peg Christopherson said.
“I sense it’s partly because these are authentic personal stories we’re telling, but also because of its theme of connecting with each other in our communities. The show celebrates the diversity of our mothers’ stories.”
The catalyst for the show’s development was the “My Mother’s Story” writing project founded in 2004 by award-winning actor/author/playwright — and core Delta Stageworks member — Marilyn Norry.
The company held a series of “My Mother’s Story” writing and storytelling workshops in 2022 that aimed to connect participants with their mother’s life story and encourage them to share diverse cultural experiences through writing and storytelling — no previous experience necessary.
From there, the eventual cast of Heirlooms & Baggage worked collaboratively with Norry to develop their mothers’ stories into a show using a devised-theatre storytelling technique that combines group movement, spoken text and images.
“What Marilyn Norry as the dramaturgist did is she took all of our stories, and then she wove them into a very cohesive piece where even though the stories about the mothers are different, the fundamental aspects of what we’re depicting on stage have a certain commonality,” Kapil said.
“Like, there’s this one part where Peg and Renee and I, who are all sort of close in age, we all say together [quoting our moms], “Don’t make me take out the wooden spoon!” So even though our parents didn’t grow up in the same place, didn’t have the same life experiences, we still have that shared experience of something our moms said.
“I think what Marilyn was able to do was to take the stories, these different powerful moments in each of our mother’s lives, which when woven together allowed us as a group to explore different aspects of their lives and unique experiences, but with some great commonalities. And then each piece builds until we start seeing the woman in each of our mothers.”
Kapil’s mother’s journey began in Fiji and took her to Nelson, B.C. (“We were the first Fijian family in Nelson, and my parents brought us up as Canadians. We definitely assimilated into the culture.”) before a noted career as an educator in the Lower Mainland.
“I have always been a great admirer of my own mom because she’s just been such a trailblazer her whole life,” Kapil said.
“She started the first class outside of [a specialized school], and she had the first satellite class that took a class of kids with exceptional needs into a regular school annex. And people didn’t know what to make of it — this was in the ‘60s. They didn’t know what to make of either this little brown teacher or the children that she served.
“And so she really was a pioneer. Then she continued to be a leader both at school and in the community, and she continues to this day to be an extremely with-it 92-year-old. I was really eager to record her history and tell her story, and that’s what drew me to Marilyn Norry’s workshop.”
Rich, true-to-life stories like these are what makes Heirlooms & Baggage different from other plays as the work is derived from the actors’ diverse backgrounds, lives and experiences rather than the point of view or a single writer.
“Delta Stage Works has worked very hard to develop and support diverse, or as I like to say, inclusive stories. We are living in a time where we see people of colour, various representatives of the community in which we live, represented now on stage. But often the stories themselves continue to be Eurocentrically-based, or your traditional stories, just now the faces that you see in them are more inclusive,” Kapil said.
“This story is different in that, because it’s devised theater, the stories are coming from us, we have created the story. My story is authentically about my Fijian-Indian-Canadian mother. Camryn’s is about her third-generation Chinese-Canadian mother. Peg’s is about her first-generation Canadian-British mother, et cetera. So there are five stories that are interwoven in this inclusive way.”
And the audiences who have seen the play have so far reflected the diversity and inclusion on stage, she said.
“I have seen theater productions in the Lower Mainland where the story focuses on a Korean family or a Chinese family or a Pakistani family or Black characters, and the audience is sort of reflective of the culture represented in the play, although you will see a smattering of others. But where I see our play is different is that it brings everybody in,” she said.
“Having grown up always feeling like an ‘Other,’ this makes me feel so different. It makes me feel like I am part of the ‘Us.’ It’s our stories, our mother’s stories.”
Heirlooms & Baggage (My Mother’s Story) will open with a preview show at the North Delta Centre for the Arts (11425 84th Ave.) on Wednesday, Feb. 12, followed by a regular performance at the venue on Thursday, Feb. 13. Both shows begin at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets are $25 for Wednesday night’s show and $34.50 for Thursday, available at deltastageworks.ca.
