Weekend AM

It looked like the season was in jeopardy. Shakespeare by the Sea is a community theatre troupe that doesn't have huge resources. But because of the kindness of supporters the 20th season is opening tonight at bannerman Park in St. John's. I stopped by the park where the cast was rehearsing their production of the Shakespearean play, A Midsummer Night's Dream.

He grew up going out in a fishing boat with his father. His life took him to PhD research in the fishery in France. Now Charles Menzies is in St. John's where his documentary is screening at the Fishing for the Future Film Festival. He's a filmmaker from British Columbia. I spoke with him at the festival yesterday.

Mental illness is getting a lot more attention than it used to. Tonight it'll get some more. It's an event called slam poetry. Performers get three minutes to perform an original work. Poets and performers are getting together in St. John's for an event called "Let's Get Mental: Expressions of Verbal Art on Mental Health Issues and Awareness" Terry Rielly is a performer who has been quite open publically about his depression. Monica J is a poet who lives with a mental health issue. They joined me in out Weekend AM studio.

It's not every day a schooner is launched any more. In fact it's a part of our culture that might have disappeared altogether if not for master boat builder Henry Vokey. Vokey's name is no stranger to boat building in this province. And at 82, he's been hard at work preparing for today, the schooner's launch. Henry Vokey joins me this morning over the phone.

On July 1, 1916, the collective heart of this then-tiny country was broken. As 801 young men from the First Newfoundland Regiment went forward at Beaumont Hamel in the Battle of the Somme. They didn't stand a chance under fire from the germeans. Consequently only 68 surviving to answer roll call the next day. Much has been said, much has been written about this day. But it bears discussing again, and again, lest we forget. Dr. Mark Humphries is a professor at Memorial University who specializes in canadain military history. He has specific expertise in the First World War and beaumont Hamel.

When it comes to what makes a good documentary, Chris Brookes knows a thing or two. He's won dozens of awards for his own work spanning decades. Now Chris is engaged in a project where he's curating the best documentaries he can find globally about the destruction of fish stocks throughout the world. The Community University Research for Recovery Alliance - CURRA - is designing a website where you can go to watch and hear some of the best work found anywhere on the subject. This is to coincide with the Fishing For the Future Film Festival that Barbara Neis and Ruth Lawrence told us about a few weeks ago.

He's be the first one to tell you he left, physically. But he never really left. But recently Rex Murphy travelled around the province to make a documentary looking at this place 20 years after the bottom fell completely out of our culture-defining, seemingly- indestructible fishery, the northern cod fishery. For over 5 centuries cod was at our core. The smell of money. But today - if money has a distinct odour - it is more likely to be that of oil. All these factors play into the documentary Rex Murphy is preparing for this week on The national.

You might call it an early case of restorative justice. A scrolled romanesque fresco painted on the ballroom ceiling at Government House in St. John's by Alexander Pindikowsky. Pindikowsky was from Poland and in 1880 he ran afoul of the law. Realizing he was a talented painter, the governor of the day made painting frescoes at government buildings part of Pindokowsky's sentence. Diane O'Mara is the senior tour guide at Government House. When I heard of this story I immediately had to find out more, so I met up with Diane in the ballroom at Government House.

It's a big week for playwright Robert Chafe. Two of his plays are on stage in his hometown, St. John's at the Arts and Culture Centre. Tempting Providence tells the story of the legendary nurse from Daniel's Harbour, Myra Bennett. And Oil and Water is the story of Lanier Phillips, shipwrecked off St. Lawrence on the USS Truxton in 1942. Robert Chafe dropped by our studio earlier in the week.

The stars of the province's craft industry were shining brightly last night. The craft industry honoured some of the finest craftspeople in the province with seven awards of excellence in craft at the 40th Anniversary Gala at Devon House in St. John's. One of them is David Goodyear. David lives in Torbay and is a physicist who works at the Cancer Centre. His clock with hand-cut wooden gears titled Hypnosis netted him the award for Innovation and Design.

It's an exhibition that took three years to curate. It involved visits to more than 400 museums and galleries and studios and talking with artists across the full range of contemporary art in Canada today. Oh Canada! is the largest exhibition of Canadian contemprary arts to ever have been shown outside the country. It's an exhibition mounted at the Massacussetts Museoum of Contemporary Art - MASS MoCA. It includes the work of 60 artists across the country. But just one Newfoundlander - photographer Ned Pratt - was chosen to show his work there. I stopped by Pratt's studio in St. John's to talk with him about his work and the show.

By their own admission it's an unconventional the pairing. The words of raconteur Gordon Pinsent, set to music by two of the counrty's most talented musicians, Blue Rodeo's, Greg Keelor and Travis Good of the Sadies. Through the jigs and the reels, Down and Out in Upalong was born. Now the show is coming to St. John's. Pinsent, Keelor and Good will be on stage at the Arts and Culture Centre this coming Tuesday, June 26th. I spoke with Greg Keelor and Gordon Pinsent by phone from Ontario.

His children's classic, Down by Jim Long's Stage has delighted children - and their parents - for almost forty years. His play, "West Moon" - while fiction - evokes a theme woven throufgh his life's work: resettlement. Al Pittman's work is steeped in the Placentia bay roots he left behind as a boy. But many of the themes he explored made his work a moveable feast to places such as Ireland. It will be 11 years in August since poet and playwright, Al Pittman passed away. This week, Corner Brook's Theatre Newfoundland Labrador is teaming up with the March Hare for an evening of tribute to Pittman. Kyran Pittman is Al's daughter. She joins us on the line from Little Rock, Arkansas where she makes her home. Anita Best is with us from her home in Rocky Harbour.

If you haven't heard of Donnie Dumphy, you're about to.

Leuben Boykov and Elena Popova - who came here are refugees from Bulgaria - join newcomers in an exhibition of refugee art.