ARTICLES
A Part of Ryga’s Past, A Piece of Ryga’s Future
by Ken Smedley
Ken Smedley began his work as a founding member of the Western Canada Youth Theatre in Kamloops, B.C. in the mid- through late 1960s. The company produced Smedley’s first full length play, Renegades, in 1970. The production toured western Canada as a seminal work from a young company that would go on, with Smedley’s continued involvement, to become the Western Canada Theatre Co. The creation of this original work, one of the first to transform B.C. history and heritage into theatre, came on the heels of Smedley’s early association with George Ryga in the late 1960s.
During the course of his apprenticeship in English repertory theatre, as an acting stage manger and producer of Lunchtime / LateNight Theatre at the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester, England, Smedley was introduced to Scottish actor Alec McCrindle. McCrindle, a co-producer of the Edinburgh Fringe, extended an invitation to the Western Canada Youth Theatre to perform at the prestigious festival. In 1973, the company presented Ryga’s The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, which earned Ryga an international Fringe First Award.
In the mid-1970s, an intensification of Smedley’s working relationship with Ryga, Newfoundland playwright Michael Cook and actor David Ross created The Giant’s Head Theatre Co. and the program “East of Ryga, West of Cook.” Based in Ryga and Cook’s most seminal work, the program toured western and eastern Canada and then, with the addition of Cook’s Teresa’s Creed, went on to tour the U.K. with Newfoundland’s Rising Tide Theatre, concluding with a limited run at the New Arts Theatre in London.
Through the latter half of te 1970s, until Ryga’s untimeley death in the late 1980s, Smedley spent a significant portion of the year writing and producing new work (initially from Ryga’s small casa) in Ajijic, Mexico, where it premiered to an international expatriate audience prior to its performance on the emerging Fringe Festival circuit in Canada. One such production was an adaptation of Margaret Laurence’s The Stone Angel, entitled Portrait of a Lady – A Tribute to Margaret Laurence, with dramaturgy by Cook and performed by Dorian Kohl, who has continued to perform the work for over 20 years. This past summer, Kohl’s tribute was once again acclaimed at the Winnipeg International Fringe Festival.
In January 1988, in collaboration with Edmonton Fringe founder Brian Paisley, Smedley produced “El Fringe,” the first Fringe festival in Latin America. Ryga died of stomach cancer on November 18, 1987, at the age of 55, at his home in Summerland, B.C. “El Fringe” was dedicated to Ryga, who once lived and wrote in the village of San Antonio, just down the road from Ajijic on the shores of Lake Chapala. It was at “El Fringe” that Smedley first performed his one-man tribute to Ryga, then titled A Ringside Date With An Angel. This tribute opened Playwrights Montreal’s 1989 National Ryga Retrospective at the National Theatre School in Montreal. Annually, during the past decade, Smedley has continued to produce a commemorative to Ryga which features aspects of Ryga’s live and work.
In February 1996, The George Ryga Centre Society, a non-profit / charitable organization independent of government funding, fundraised the down-payment on Ryga’s former home in Summerland, B.C., where The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, along with the majority of Ryga’s vast body of work, was created. Since that time, The George Ryga Centre has functioned as a cultural centre / retreat in memory of Ryga’s enormous contribution to Canadian culture.
With a monthly mortgage to pay, the Centre, under Smedley’s direction, is an active organization which has produced a national authors’ series, hosting such writers as Sandra Birdsell, Mark Leiren-Young, Cynthia Flood and Sean Virgo, to name a few. It also hosted annual Songwriter’s Workshops, performances with Bill Henderson and Roy Forbes, George Ryga Week in B.C. (as proclaimed by the province of B.C., featuring the legendary talents of the likes of Gary Fjallgaard and Lorne Elliott, most recently with the collaborative ingenuity of Professor John Lent [UBC], and B.C. Bookworld Publishing Plan).
At the end of the day, after attending to the needs of the Centre, Smedley continues to write on an old Underwood. His latest play is entitled The Erotic Exchange.