By Peggy Coffey, Starring Peggy Coffey
Stratford-based artist Peggy Coffey has taken stories from 100 years of the Women’s Institute and produced a stage presentation. Beautiful masks, designed by a Stratford Festival technician help to tell the stories.
The Women’s Institutes were integral to the development of our communities.
These are the types of women Alice writes about -
1:30 – 2:30 p.m.
The Phillips Studio, Blyth
Phillips Studio – 209 Dinsley Street, Blyth, Ontario N0M 1H0
$12* per person … or purchase a Saturday in Alice Country Pass for $60 for three events – On Reading Alice Munro, I was Born and the Gala – Appreciating Alice.
Book tickets
. online at this LINK
. call 519-523-4328, or
. email
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Peggy brings alive the stories of women who began their lives at the turn of the century in rural Ontario — extraordinary women who lived through some of the most dramatic changes of any generation. The presentation is based on stories of the women of the Women’s Institutes, which were collected and published by the Women’s Institute (WI) in a book called From This Place by Pat Salter.
“I was immediately taken by the power and historical significance of the stories these women tell about the lives they lived in the early part of the 20th Century in rural southern Ontario,” Peggy says, and she began to envision a theatre piece which would tell these stories and celebrate the lives of these remarkable women.
Working in collaboration with Heather Ruthig, a prop and mask maker from the Stratford Festival, they created the first mask. 'Grace' is a ninety year old woman who tells the first story in the book. Peggy recalls: “I envisioned 'Grace' standing on a white pedestal with “circa 1901" on a sign at her feet, the idea being that she is a 'museum piece'. Then Grace steps off the pedestal and tells her story.”
Peggy gives “voice to an entire generation, whose perspective stands in illuminating contrast to our crowded, chaotic, and ever-shrinking world” one audience member said after seeing Peggy perform this piece. Marion Adler says it best: (I Was Born) is “a magical, immediate, exhilarating experience of the past (achieved) with simplicity and grace.”