GEORGE BELLIVEAU
This essay examines how Wendy Lill's The Glace Bay Miners' Museum and Gerry Wexler/Mort Ransen's Margaret's Museum re-interpret the politics of Sheldon Currie's short story "The Glace Bay Miners' Museum" through their choice of dramatic structures, characterizations, and titles. The two adaptations highlight, develop, and privilege different aspects of the source material to suit the distinct features of theatre and film, as well as their target audiences. I argue that Lill's stage play, with its emphasis on union and workers' rights, overtly foregrounds the political; whereas by privileging the love story, Wexler/Ransen's film initially appears to de-emphasize the political.
Dans cette étude j'analyse la ré-interprétation de The Glace Bay Miners' Museum de Sheldon Currie faite par Wendy Lill dans The Glace Bay Miners' Museum et par Gerry Wexler/Mort Ransen dans Margaret's Museum. Je compare leur choix de structures dramatiques, d'interprétation de personnages, et de titres. Les deux adaptations soulignent, dévelopent et privilégient différents aspects de leur source pour s'adapter aux conventions du théâtre et du cinéma, et aussi pour convenir aux publics ciblés. Je propose que la pièce de théâtre de Lill, en insistant sur les droits des ouvriers et du syndicat, met ouvertement en évidence le côté politique; par contre, en insistant sur l'histoire d'amour, le film de Wexler/Ransen semble diminuer l'aspect politique..
In the sphere of Canadian literature, few stories have metamorphosed into as many literary forms as Sheldon Currie's short story "The Glace Bay Miners' Museum." Currie's tragic tale of mining families in Cape Breton, first published in the Antigonish Review (1976), has been adapted into a radio drama (The Glace Miners' Museum, Wendy Lill, 1991), a stage play (The Glace Bay Miners' Museum, Wendy Lill, 1995), a feature film (Margaret's Museum, Gerry Wexler and Mort Ransen, 1995), and a novel (The Glace Bay Miners' Museum, Currie, 1996). "My God," says Currie in an interview. "This thing has more heads than a hydra" (Smulders 31). In fact, the short story itself was adapted from the song "The Ballad of Charlie Dave," written by Currie in 1964.
In this paper, I examine how Lill's The Glace Bay Miners' Museum and Wexler/Ransen's Margaret's Museum2 re-interpret the politics of Currie's short story through their choice of dramatic structures, characterizations, and titles. While both adaptations retain most of Currie's events and characters, the two works highlight, develop, and privilege different aspects of "The Glace Bay Miners' Museum" in order to suit the distinct features of theatre and film, as well as their target audiences.3 I argue that Lill's stage play, with its emphasis on the union and workers' rights, overtly foregrounds the political; whereas by privileging the love story, Wexler/Ransen's film initially appears to de-emphasize the political. However, underneath the romantic veneer, Margaret's Museum evinces an equally deep political tone as The Glace Bay Miners' Museum. In his book Script into Performance: A Structuralist View of Play Production, Richard Hornby points to the necessity of uncovering the wholistic and interconnected elements of a drama to better understand and appreciate the fundamental patterns of script and performance. Hornby's terms for analysis (choice, rhythm, tempo, duration, and progression) are useful tools to explore how Lill and Wexler/Ransen structure and foreground different elements of Currie's short story.
While in Alabama pursuing graduate studies, Currie became homesick for Cape Breton. So in his effort to remember his roots, he decided to write the "The Ballad of Charlie Dave." The song springs from the author's childhood in Reserve Mines where he grew up. Most of the men of his family (grandfather, father, uncles, cousins) were coal miners, and he too was keen to work underground, but was never hired. He suspects that his father, not wanting his son to repeat his life, had something to do with his not getting employed. During an interview with Pat Donnelly, Currie mentions that upon his return to Cape Breton (after he completed his doctorate in the United States) his father took him to see the newly built Glace Bay Miners' Museum: "I went down and had a look at it. I found it kind of strange. It didn't seem to me to be about miners" (Donnelly C5). This experience provoked him to expand his ballad into a short story, in effect to create a literary museum to remember the Glace Bay miners: "He envisioned [retired miners] storming the museum and nailing body parts to the wall," but abandoned that idea in favor of "Margaret, the miner's wife who loses her mind when she loses her man" (Donnelly C5).
Currie had no intention of romanticizing the coal mining industry because for him "Glace Bay" is "synonymous with black lung, dreary company houses and teenage widows" (Smulders 30). His story depicts an awful social phenomenon that existed in his hometown when he was growing up. And although the danger of the mines hovered over everyone, the larger tragedy stemmed from the community's lack of options in their choice of vocation. No passages in the short story insinuate that mining is honorable or worthy. "‘Oh no, no, no,' says Currie, . . . ‘You won't get that from me'" (Smulders 30). The reason these people work in the mines, according to Currie, is because they "need to feed their families. They'd starve otherwise" (Smulders 30). He compares the miners to soldiers in a war: "When you live in a trench with a guy and you save his life five or six times, you kind of get fond of the guy. But that doesn't mean you want to keep fighting the war" (Smulders 30). Humor and family heritage are crucial elements in "The Glace Bay Miners' Museum," yet the ethical purpose of the story is to illuminate the perpetual cycle of oppression that continues to suffocate the mining community—but not without a challenge by the Cape Bretoners. Of the many political undertones in the short story, the most apparent appears in the following dialogue:
Ian would tell Neil that the only hope for the miner was to vote CCF and get a labour government.
"How are you going to manage that?"
"By voting. Organizing."
"When is that going to happen?"
"We have to work for it."
"The future?"
"Yes, the future."
"There's no future," Neil would say.
"There has to be a future."
"See in the bedroom, Ian. See your grandfather. That's the future."
"Well, he's there. The future's there." (Currie 104)
This political debate between Neil and Ian about the value of a social democratic government is perhaps where the stage and screen adaptations part ways most significantly. Lill's stage play takes Currie's underlying message a step further politically, for she accentuates the battle between the miners and owners. Her plot develops this exchange between Neil and Ian much more fully by creating in Ian, who lives for the union, a political passion. In time, Ian's passion rubs off on Neil and many other community members. Finally, their actions culminate in the strike. Focusing more sharply on the love story, Wexler/Ransen omit from the film the union debates, and the cited exchange between Neil and Ian from Currie's short story does not appear in the film. The only overt depiction of the miners' frustration with the social conditions occurs when a drunken Uncle Angus (a character from Currie's novel The Company Store and a central figure in the film) burns down the company store, presumably more out of anger toward his wife than toward the mine owners.4 The romantic scenes in Margaret's Museum are frequently shadowed by death, despair, and hopelessness, so that never distant from love and beauty lies the mining industry's ugliness and greed. In juxtaposing life and death, the film, in comparison to the stage play, presents the politics of the story in a more subtle and personal manner.
Structure
Margaret MacNeil narrates the events in Currie's "The Glace Bay Miners' Museum," and her memories of the circumstances leading to the mining tragedies of her family dominate the story. Her first memory begins when she meets Neil Currie ("the biggest son of a bitch [I] ever saw") in the White Rose Café, and from there the story progresses forward with a few shifts back to the narrative present (Currie 94). Lill's The Glace Bay Miners' Museum, like Currie's version, has Margaret as the narrative voice remembering the past. Lill's choice to maintain the memory device is not surprising, having used the memory play structure in several of her earlier works, such as The Occupation of Heather Rose (1986), Memories of You (1988), and Sisters (1989). Margaret opens the stage version singing, then addresses the audience in the present or "now" of the play by describing various artifacts from her museum. She introduces Neil as someone from her past, which leads her to guide the audience back in time to their first encounter in the café. From this point onwards the past events dominate the action, and are filtered through Margaret's memory. These memories progressively lead the audience toward the raison d'être of her macabre museum. To remind the audience that they are witnessing memories, Lill periodically flips the action back to the play's present where Margaret waits for people to "take a look around" (Lill 10). Events prior to the café scene are presented through dialogue, yet Lill does not re-stage them; she keeps the majority of the action within what Gerard Genette calls an interior analepse (events taking place between the established present of the play and the point at which the staged memories begin). As in the short story, Lill's Margaret lives simultaneously in the present and past, creating omnipresence, which in production becomes multi-layered because the same actress, in the same space, plays the split character.5
Wexler/Ransen minimize the use of the memory structure. The layered opening of Margaret's Museum first takes the viewer to an exterior analepse (Genette's term for events taking place prior to the beginning of the extended flashback) where Margaret is a young girl, supposedly having sex with two young boys. Then, the camera pans across the natural beauty of the Cape Breton Highlands and seashore to the Gaelic sounds of the Rankin Family. The panoramic opening then zooms in on a car leading the viewer to the film's present where two weary tourists arrive to visit Margaret's newly opened museum. The female tourist enters the museum to use the bathroom. A loud scream is heard. Then, petrified, the tourist runs back to the safety of her car. What she sees inside the museum is the story we are about to be told. After a brief voice-over by Margaret, which suggests a memory, the scene flashes back to three years earlier at the White Rose Café where Margaret and Neil first meet. From this scene until the end of the film the story remains within an extended flashback. In Flashbacks in Film: Memory and History, Maureen Turim states that flashbacks often "involve a quest for the answer to an enigma posed in the beginning of a narrative through a return to the past. The frame-tale opens with a consequence, . . . then flashes back to tell how or why this event came to be" (Turim 11). The long flashback in Margaret's Museum provides ample evidence for the scream, and it is only at the very end of the film that the audience is returned to the present.
Lill's choice of maintaining Currie's memory structure and periodically returning the audience to the play's present highlights her desire to disrupt the play's primarily realistic style. Lill alienates the audience in a Brechtian manner, reminding us through Margaret's living museum, how present-day mining communities still suffer under the stranglehold of capitalist organization. Wexler/Ransen chose not to interrupt the flow of the inner story and, therefore, reduced the significance of the memory device. The film's beginning and ending, as effective as they are, act as bookends to the long flashback because, once the inner story begins, most viewers forget that they have been flashed back to three years earlier. In this sense, the flashback in Margaret's Museum becomes merely a structural device; whereas in the short story and in the play, the memory structure alienates the audience and deepens the meaning because the time shifts constantly recall the perpetual cycle of oppression in Glace Bay and the need for change.
The memory of Charlie Dave, Margaret's deceased older brother, remains a central element in both versions, and how his story is retold informs the structuring of the play and film adaptations. Neil wants to write a song for Margaret, so he asks her, "what's the happiest thing in your life or the saddest?" She answers, "They're both the same. My brother. Not the one living here but my older brother, Charlie" (Currie 102). Neil composes "The Ballad of Charlie Dave" for her, then sings it. Moved by the song about her dead brother, Margaret is convinced that she will marry Neil (Currie 106). The juxtaposition of what appears to be two extremes (marriage and death) is emphasized differently in the play and film versions.
Hornby describes rhythm "as the transition between scenes," especially the "direct relation between two incidents that are contiguous" (Hornby 86). In the film, Neil sings the ballad to Margaret outside her mother's house, then the scene flashes forward to their wedding in an almost surreal manner. Playing with happy and sad moments becomes a strong motif in the film, and this juxtaposition creates a particular rhythm. The film frequently depicts hope and potential happiness before switching the action to despair and hopelessness. The final scene between Neil and Margaret walking hand in hand in a field plays with emotional and psychological extremes. Accompanied by romantic music, the couple playfully kiss before they part company. The next brief sequence depicts Grandpa MacNeil looking out the window in distress, anticipating something awful. A few seconds later the haunting sound of the siren is heard, indicating a mining disaster. The camera leads the viewer toward the mines with people rushing across the frame in disarray, desperately trying to save the injured miners, or grieving the loss of family and friends. Throughout Margaret's Museum, Wexler/Ransen subtly present thematic, scenic, and musical juxtapositions: the use of these extremities shapes the rhythm and intensifies the contrast between happiness and hopelessness.
Lill also makes use of juxtapositions, but for the most part her scenes of woe and woo are not re-staged for the audience. They remain as references. For example, once Neil finishes singing "The Ballad of Charlie Dave," Margaret says, "I think that I'm ready [to marry] Neil Currie" (Lill 80). The audience is not privy to the wedding, yet the memory of death and the promise of an upcoming marriage are juxtaposed. Another instance where marriage and death are placed side by side occurs when Catherine describes how she met her husband: "I met your father at the wake of Minnie's Uncle Joe Archie" (Lill 67). In both these examples, Lill sandwiches the happy/sad references between political debates. In the scene before Neil sings "The Ballad of Charlie Dave," he is arguing with Ian about union issues (I.viii), and shortly after the song (II.i) Margaret describes her grandmother Morag's determination to maintain pride and fight against industrialism. Another example where union talk surrounds a scene of hope and despair occurs in II.ii. Prior to setting out to save a beached whale from "a bunch of drunken galoots," which is an overt political endeavor in itself, Neil suggests to Ian that his "union's got about as much clout as a wet mop in a rainstorm" (Lill 98). "After [the drunken galoots] finished beating the pulp out of Ian and Neil" (Lill 99), the brothers-in-law once again engage in political talk:
Ian: Those bastards spit in his face but that whale's still got
pride.
Neil: A friggin whale's pride.
Ian: Yeh. A friggin whale's pride. It's struggling along too eh, just like the
rest of us. You just can't give up. You can't just sit by. We helped
him out and maybe now he's got a chance.
Neil: Maybe he does and maybe he doesn't.
Ian: Well one thing I know for sure—if you don't work at it, if you don't fight for it, it ain't gonna
happen. That's what the union's all about. (Lill 101-2)
The transitions between these scenes (and the majority of the scenes in the play) only alter the rhythm slightly because even though the events and settings change, Lill maintains a relatively consistent level of political and union debate. Ransen/Wexler, on the other hand, frequently juxtapose happiness and sadness, hope and despair, by significantly contrasting the setting and musical score. These frequent and often quick scene changes alter the film's rhythm considerably and heighten the emotional impact of the personal tragedies.
Hornby describes tempo as "a function of the number of incidents occurring per unit of time," and he points out that it "should not be confused, in performance, with mere speed of playing time" (Hornby 88). The slowness of scenes frequently points to places where the artist seeks to draw special attention or give some weight to the moment. The tempo in Margaret's Museum varies in that some sequences include numerous incidents in a short period of time, providing expository information, whereas in others, such as the one where Margaret shares the story of Charlie Dave, the tempo slows down tremendously. Nearly five minutes are spent in this scene with only a few camera angles, some shots lasting nearly a minute before cutting to another shot. The slowing down of the tempo in this scene emphasizes the importance of the developing relationship between Neil and Margaret, and at the same time foreshadows the tragic fate of Jimmy and Neil.
In the stage play, Lill chooses to slow down the tempo during the union debates between Neil and Ian. In I.vi, both men argue for over four pages about the benefits of the union versus the memory of one's heritage. Although heated, the union debates between Ian and Neil slow the tempo of the play, underlining the importance of these arguments. Most directors and theatre critics frown upon slow moments in a production, and Jo Ledingham's comment regarding a recent Theatre UBC staging of The Glace Bay Miners' Museum (1998) points to her misunderstanding of the tempo embedded in the structure of the script: "[T]he play loses momentum during the political arguments between Neil and Ian that, predictably, don't go anywhere" (Ledingham 29). The duration and slower tempo of these scenes represent Lill's desire to show that debates about change take a long time, and what Ledingham criticizes represents a built-in structural device that informs the meaning of the play.
Character
The depiction of Margaret's younger brother (named Ian in the play, Jimmy in the film) reveals some of the different political approaches taken in the two adaptations. Ian and Jimmy both work in the mine and are romantically involved with the mine-manager's daughter (named Peggy in the play, Marilyn in the film). But the play privileges Ian's involvement in the mine, while the film foregrounds Jimmy's romantic interest. Lill's Ian works in the coal mine from the opening, and his true devotion resides with the union. His relationship with Peggy occurs off-stage because Lill opts to leave her out of the dramatis personae.6 Throughout The Glace Bay Miners' Museum, Ian argues with Neil about politics, expounding on the benefits of the union and miners' rights. His conviction leads to a strike at which point he sacrifices the possibility of working above ground and loses his Peggy all for the greater good of the community. Like his ancestor Morag before him, and his grandfather more recently, Ian tries to change what seems to be unchangeable, even if he has to die for it, because "if you don't work at it, if you don't fight for it, it ain't gonna happen" (Lill 102).
The reason why Margaret pickles her brother's penis at the end of the short story ("she didn't know what to take from [him]" (Currie 110)) makes perfect sense in the film because Jimmy's "hormones are hopping" in Ransen's adaptation (Pedersen 9). Ian's sexual desire in the stage version is much more subdued, and keeping his penis as a memento resonates less than in the film. Unlike Ian in the play, Jimmy does not work in the mines from the beginning;7 rather, it is only toward the end of the film that he enters the pit and his reason for going underground is primarily to support Marilyn. Jimmy's preoccupation with Marilyn begins early in the film, and the development of their relationship becomes an integral supporting part of the plot. The scenes between Jimmy and Marilyn add emotional weight to the film in that they present innocence and hope, two characteristics that can only remain short-lived in this mining community.
Hornby uses the term duration to signify the length of an incident in "both real chronological time and psychological weighting" (Hornby 85). It is important to investigate not only which incidents are selected, but also how long or privileged is the incident. In The Glace Bay Miners' Museum, Ian appears in eight scenes. And in seven of these, he discusses union issues with Neil. In Margaret's Museum Jimmy appears in nine scenes, and six of them develop his relationship with Marilyn, who appears in five. The relative duration of Ian's union interest and Jimmy's love interest suggests the different emphasis each adaptation places upon the role of Margaret's brother. The inevitability of doomed love in the mining community highlighted in the film depicts the politics in a less overt manner than Lill's union championing. But the film's emphasis on Jimmy's romantic interest, like the play's highlighting of Ian's devotion to the union, represents how the determination and passion of youth are eventually smothered by the mining industry.
Another important way in which the film and stage versions differ in their representation of Ian and Jimmy stems from their relationship with Margaret. Currie does not develop the sibling relations in his short story, yet the stage and film versions construct distinct dynamics between Margaret and Ian/Jimmy. In the film, Margaret guides Jimmy through some of his troubled moments, and plays a supportive, sisterly role. For example, when Neil finds one of Jimmy's love letters and sets out to publicly read it, Margaret tries to protect her younger brother against the teasing. In Lill's version, Margaret continually belittles Ian, remarking how inferior he is in comparison to the dead, idealized older brother, Charlie Dave: "Charlie Dave loved it when someone stole my mitts. Then he'd wade in and beat the shit right out of them. But not our Ian. He's a mouse kissing mama's boy" (Lill 46). Margaret treats him with utter disrespect for no apparent reason, except perhaps that he failed to fill the shoes of Charlie Dave, whom she deeply admired and misses. However, in the second half of both adaptations, a telling event involving Margaret and her brother takes place. In the stage version, Margaret not only warms up to Ian near the end of the play, but she decides to assist him and Neil with the strike. In the film, Margaret also assists her brother, but instead of helping to organize a strike, she and Neil invite Jimmy and Marilyn to their seashore home for an evening of entertainment. In both cases, Margaret's assistance to her brother is to no avail because both endeavors fail: the strike results in few benefits and Marilyn's father cuts the potentially romantic evening short.
Both versions opt to leave Charlie Dave off stage, yet he becomes a foil for his younger brother in the two adaptations. Margaret embraces Charlie Dave's physical strength and charisma in the stage version, and for most of the play compares the brothers. Wexler/Ransen present Jimmy as a younger version of Charlie Dave, doomed to follow the same tragic path. Jimmy is not portrayed as a strapping young man in the film,8 but the relationship with Marilyn and his entrance into the mines echo Charlie Dave's story: Jimmy falls in love (as did Charlie Dave with his Maggie June). Charlie needed to support his partner, so he worked in the mines (Maggie was pregnant). He got killed at sixteen. Toward the end of the film, Catherine apprehensively mends Charlie Dave's mining clothes for Jimmy. This chilling scene resonates because the mother realizes the tragic pattern of the men in her family. Wexler/Ransen re-play Charlie Dave's tragedy through Jimmy, highlighting the cycle of oppression that young men (and as a result, entire families) endure in mining towns.
Progression is described by Hornby as a "way in which an incident foreshadows another incident or, conversely, the way in which a future incident reflects an earlier one" (Hornby 84). His definition could be expanded to include how characters progress through the development of a drama and how, in turn, their actions develop, foreshadow, or recall another character's actions. The film makers' desire to illustrate the cyclical pattern in mining communities is suggested by their foreshadowing the events that lead Jimmy to his grave through the memory of Charlie Dave. In The Glace Bay Miners' Museum, Ian begins as a supporter of the union. Then he gives speeches at meetings, and ultimately his actions lead the union to strike. This development echoes an earlier miners' strike described by Catherine: "I remember . . . watching my own grandfather and my father and my husband and 3000 miners take a strike vote in front of a bonfire. They were so full of themselves, so sure they were right, that they would win. But they didn't" (Lill 118). Catherine's recollections of the earlier strike echo the determination and conviction of Ian. At the same time, her memories also foreshadow the failure of Ian's endeavor.
Ian gradually convinces his brother-in-law to support the union, and he eventually succeeds. In I.ii, Neil comments to Ian how "unions just trick poor suckers into thinking they got some say in things" (Lill 29). By II.ii, Neil has come full circle: "[Ian], you're right about the union" (Lill 102). Eventually, the two lead the strike together (Lill 119). By gradually developing Ian's commitment to the union and building Neil into a union supporter, Lill privileges the political themes hinted at in Currie's story. And just as importantly, she highlights the power imbalance between the miners and the owners. Therefore, the progression within Lill's structure emphasizes the political/union issues, whereas the structural progression of Jimmy filling Charlie Dave's shoes in the film highlights the romantic and tragic—a political statement, too, yet less overt.
In the short story, Neil is a man in love who "reconnects the family to its oral traditions through his love of storytelling and music, melting the family's icy unhappiness" (MacDonald 8). Both adaptations maintain Neil's desire to reconnect the MacNeils to their Gaelic roots; however, the stage version creates a politically passionate Neil who gradually becomes motivated by mine politics. He enters the mines because he needs the work, but he also wants to support Ian and the union. Margaret also supports the strike in Lill's play by rallying the women from the community to support the union.9 In the film, the primary reason Neil returns to work in the mines (against Margaret's wishes) stems from his desire to have a family and continue the line of Curries. He resists working in the mines because he knows he will be exploited like everyone else. But when he loses his job washing dishes in the Chinese restaurant, he is left with little choice. His personal act of resistance represents his politics, which differs substantially from Lill's Neil who publicly, along with Ian, spearheads the union strike.
Title
Both adaptations elect to keep the word museum in their title, yet Lill's choice to retain Glace Bay Miners' and Wexler/Ransen's decision to re-name it Margaret's illustrate the overall approaches taken in the two versions. The Glace Bay Miners' Museum premièred at the Ship's Company Theatre in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia in a co-production with Dartmouth's Eastern Front Theatre Company in 1995. The Nova Scotia audience would have been familiar with the coal mining industry in Glace Bay, and the recent mining tragedy in Westray (1994) had made the subject of mines especially topical in the province.10 This explains Lill's deliberate choice to keep Currie's original title for her Maritime audience. Furthermore, even though Lill focuses on the MacNeil household, the tragedy she dramatizes represents a microcosm of the thousands of miners and their families who endured the toil of the coal mining industry.
Margaret's Museum's creators chose to dissociate themselves from the specific locale of Glace Bay, reaching for a broader, international audience. In order to recover the costs of the film, Ransen needed to sell his product beyond the local market of Nova Scotia. Having secured Helena Bonham-Carter to play Margaret, Ransen could market her star status in the promotions. Her reputation in decorous Merchant-Ivory films earned her international recognition, and her appearance as a coal miner's wife (convincingly, I might add) certainly piqued the curiosity of moviegoers. The decision to insert "Margaret" in the title rather than "The Glace Bay Miners'" was likely influenced by marketing, but the choice also supports the intense focus placed upon Margaret (Bonham-Carter) in the film. Ransen takes full advantage of the actress's stunning beauty by inserting numerous close-ups, as well as foregrounding Margaret's personal journey. The film de-emphasizes the overt historical/political elements, and instead intensifies Margaret's personal plight. Wexler/Ransen privilege Margaret's passion in resisting the devouring mining industry, and they present this resistance through her relationship with Neil and her mother, Catherine, rather than through overt political debates. Another telling example of the different emphases is the image on the jacket cover for each adaptation. The paperback version of The Glace Bay Miners' Museum, published by Talonbooks, presents a group of miners (presumably Glace Bay miners) on the front and back cover of the text, whereas the video cassette (and promotional poster) of Margaret's Museum depicts a large close-up image of Helena Bonham-Carter (Margaret) embracing Neil (Clive Russell) on its front cover.
The medium of film can take the viewer to many locations in little time, whereas in theatre, a limited number of scenes is usually depicted. However, in both cases the rhythm, tempo, duration, and progression of the scenes tend to signify or stress what the artists deem worthy of presentation. Lill's desire to foreground the socio-political issues from Currie's story mirrors some of her earlier work—On the Line (1982), The Fighting Days (1984), All Fall Down (1993)—and her socially conscious play addresses a deep concern for the people of Nova Scotia (especially in light of the Westray mining disaster). The film makers' choice to accentuate the romance and de-emphasize the battle between the mine workers and owners reflects their desire to capture a broader audience. Nonetheless, with the juxtaposition of hope and despair amid the relationships, Wexler/Ransen create a film that presents the tragedy on a level that is more personal, but nevertheless still political and meaningful. Critic Stephen Pedersen suggests that in leaving out the politics, Margaret's Museum leaves "the audience with a ‘romantic' attraction. A story about life, becomes a story about love" (Pedersen 9). His comments merely investigate the surface of the film because the privileging of the romance does not rule out its political potential. "Yes, this is a love story, but one so integrated with themes of class struggle and social identity that it's sometimes difficult to tell the miner from the mine" (Golfman 28). Using different, yet equally effective, structural and thematic approaches to convey their political message, both Lill and Wexler/Ransen adapt and interpret Currie's original short story to suit their respective audience and medium.
NOTES
1. I first presented this paper in 1999 at the ACTR conference in Sherbrooke, and the feedback from colleagues was much appreciated. In particular, I would like to thank Jerry Wasserman for his assistance with this paper.
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2. Gerry Wexler acquired the film rights from Currie in 1984, then co-wrote the film adaptation with Mort Ransen. Ransen produced and directed the film.
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3. Lill and Wexler/Ransen also took material from Currie's novel (written at the same time as the film and stage adaptations), yet the primary material and inspiration come from the short story.
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4. Currie's The Company Store (1988), which is also set in Glace Bay during the 1940s, became another source for the film makers to establish setting and character, as well as another place to borrow a few scenes.
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5. In Sisters and Memories of You, Lill uses two actresses to interpret the younger and older versions of the same character.
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6. Lill's original commission by the Ship's Company for the summer of 1995 was a play called Under the Influence, but six weeks before its scheduled opening the new script had to be put aside. Under the Influence depicts an individual, still living, who refused to be fictionalized and threatened legal action against the company if they presented the play. Therefore, Lill, along with director Mary Vingoe, re-worked her radio version of "The Glace Bay Miners' Museum" within the six-week time period. Most of the actors had already been hired for the earlier script; therefore, this influenced the number of characters and the creation of the stage version of The Glace Bay Miners' Museum (Vingoe).
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7. Jimmy tries to work in the mines, but Uncle Angus prevents him. This event reflects Currie's personal experience.
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8. In the song "The Ballad of Charlie Dave," which appears in each version, Charlie Dave is described as six feet tall and nearly two feet wide.
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9. In Currie's novel, Margaret also rallies the women to support the strike.
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10. Another significant mining tragedy occurred in 1957 in Springhill, N.S., which is only a few miles away from Parrsboro.
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WORKS CITED
Currie, Sheldon. The Company Store. Ottawa: Oberon Press, 1988.
—. "The Glace Bay Miners' Museum." The Story So Far. Wreck Cove: Breton Books, 1997. 89-112.
Donnelly, Pat. "Short Story Took on Life of Its Own." The Gazette 2 Oct. 1996: C5.
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Golfman, Noreen. "Mining Margaret's Museum." Canadian Forum (April 1996): 28-31.
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Ledingham, Jo. "Museum Destined to Be a Canadian Classic." The Vancouver Courier 8 Nov. 1998: 29.
Lill, Wendy. The Glace Bay Miners' Museum. Burnaby: Talonbooks, 1996.
MacDonald, Ron Foley. "Miners' and Margaret's Museum All Grown Up Now." The Sunday Daily News 9 Mar. 1997: 8.
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Pedersen, Stephen. "Museum Film Succeeds Despite Weakened Characters." The Mail-Star 30 Sept. 1995: C1.
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