Patti Andrews remembers, as a child, her Nanny Ryan having a secret garden outside her house in Salmonier.
It technically wasn’t exactly secret — everyone knew it was there — but it was picketed and the children were forbidden to go in.
“She had 11 children and that was her place to go,” Andrews explains. “She had wild roses and we could smell them outside the garden but we couldn’t go in. She had plum trees, a pear tree and I don’t know what else she had in there, because I wasn’t ever allowed in.”
Andrews, who is celebrating her 25th year teaching performing arts to children as young as five as well as adults, has long been drawn to Frances’ Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 novel “The Secret Garden,” perhaps for obvious reasons as well as a teaching tool.
When she decided to do a bigger than usual show with her students and members of the local arts community this year, she chose the stage version of the novel, adapting it in order to fit a cast of nearly 60 performers. Her production of “The Secret Garden” opened at the LSPU Hall in St. John’s Thursday evening and will run until Sunday.
The play is set in India and England at the turn of the 20th century. Mary Lennox is a sickly 10-year-old, neglected by her parents and left in the care of servants. After her parents died of cholera, she is sent to live with her rich, hunchbacked uncle Archibald Craven, whom she has never met.
Through a friendly maid, Mary eventually learns about her late aunt, who had a private rose garden on the property. After she died, Craven locked the walled garden and buried the key.
As her sullen and spoiled character softens, Mary becomes fixated on finding the key.
Among Mary’s companions are gardener Ben Weatherstaff and, later, Colin Craven, her cousin. Mary meets him after hearing cries from inside the house and following them to a hidden bedroom, where he spends much of his time in his wheelchair with a spinal problem.
“I love that she develops over the time and turns into a person who actually cares about other people’s feelings, and how She and Colin just build this friendship that they really didn’t main to,” says 12-year-old Rachel Organ, a St. Peter’s Junior High student and one of two young actresses playing the part of Mary. Many of the child roles in Andrews’ production are double-cast.
“Both of them had parents who didn’t really love them as they should have, and they didn’t get that kind of love growing up. Us as actual children, we don’t always really appreciate the love we get from our families, but Mary and Colin didn’t really have that.
One of Colin’s first scenes in the production sees him sitting in his wheelchair, throwing his medicine over a maid and screaming.
Basile Vuillaume, one of two actors playing Colin, has empathy for his character, even if he can’t really relate. He had to learn tecnhiques to stage-scream without damaging his voice, he says.
“Colin doesn’t care about anything anybody else says because he has something in his mind,” Basile tells The Telegram. “He wants to see the world because he hasn’t really done anything. He’s always been in the wheelchair telling people that he’s going to die. He’s always wanted to go outside, and I think that’s the reason why he gets so angry.”
Basile, who says he had to learn how to stage scream in order to do the role justice while protecting his voice, gets into character by reviewing his lines and trying to get into Colin’s head space, speaking loudly.
With her performance school, The Performing Arts Group, Andrews’ goal is to make all her students stars by giving them equal stage time and lines. Her students include young children learning to act, junior high school students hoping to become better public speakers, and adults crossing items off their bucket list.
Sean Collins plays Archibald Craven, and had never acted until six years ago, when he was in his early 30s. He had always been shy and reserved, he says, and had wanted to act but didn’t feel he could. Some challenging life circumstances made him realize the importance of living life to the fullest, so he decided to give performing a go.
“Attending the Performing Arts Group with Patti really helped me come out of my shell and find my voice,” says Collins, whose stage credits now include roles with Shakespeare by the Sea and St. John’s Players, among other productions. “It allowed me to cross one thing off my bucket list and I’m so glad I did.
Not all the performers in “The Secret Garden” are Andrews’ students. After casting her own performers, she opened auditions to the public and recruited some members of the local arts community whom she felt would be a good fit. One of those is Vanessa Cardoso-Whelan, a multidisciplinary artist, street performer and clown who has been living in this province since 2014. Cardoso-Whalen will play a statue in the garden, her position changing and growing as Mary’s personality does.
Andrews also invited members of the local Indian community to perform in the production, believing it important to accurately reflect Indian culture and clothing in the scenes set there.
She hopes those who come see the show leave with an appreciation of the talent of local performers, and take home a warm feeling.
“I hope people have memories of beautiful things, like my grandmother’s garden. I hope they realize that although today’s society is riddled with war, it always was, and there’s peace and harmony and growth in any time.”
Produced and directed by Andrews with set and light design by Clar Doyle, “The Secret Garden” will run at the LSPU Hall until Sunday, with shows at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.. Tickets are available at the LSPU Hall box office and online at lspuhall.ca .
Twitter: @tara_bradbury
