"Jake's Gift" is a tribute to World War II veterans

It’s appropriate that, at the country’s 150th anniversary, the Stars for Saskatchewan season ends with a play celebrating history. Jake’s Gift is a play celebrating Canada’s veterans, focusing on the story of one as he makes his way back to Normandy to find the graves of his brother. It is the final show in this season of the Yorkton Arts Council’s Stars for Saskatchewan series, on April 29 at 7:30 p.m.
The play was born at the 60th anniversary of D-day, explains Julia Mackey, writer and performer of Jake’s Gift. The character of Jake was created earlier, as part of a workshop she attended with her partner Dirk Van Stralen, who is also the play’s director, but she thought that there was more to his story.
“I went for a week and I interviewed as many “Jakes” as I could find. I went to the beaches and I went to the Canadian cemeteries, and I created the play out of these experiences.”
The play itself involves Jake’s experience on his first time back to France, where he meets a young girl from the town he helped liberate.
“She has no filter because she’s so young, and she’s the person who helps Jake deal with the loss of his brother, and helps him heal from a loss he hasn’t been able to get over for 60 years.”
The story is a mix of comedy and drama, pairing heavy subject matter with the laughs that come from the contrast between an older man and a very young woman.
Just preparing for the play was an emotional experience for Mackey, since she really connected with the loss that the second World War represented for Canada and the rest of the world.
“I had an original iPod that I brought with me to do recording with. Listening back with that iPod there are so many times that I start to talk about my experiences and I’d have to stop... I knew it was going to be emotional, I’ve always had a deep interest in the war and in particular to Remembrance Day... Nothing can prepare you for walking into a graveyard of thousands and thousands of Canadians who weren’t even 21 years old. The sense of loss is palpable when you walk into those graveyards, for me it was quite a moving experience and I’ll never, ever forget it. The French people were amazing, and the work they do to honour the Canadian people who were killed in the war is incredible.”
It’s a one woman show, with Mackey playing four different characters. Apart from Jake and Isabelle, the young girl, Mackey also plays Isabelle’s grandmother and a Canadian teacher, quickly switching between roles.
“When I first wrote the play I didn’t intend for it to be a solo performance. I thought that I would play Jake because that was the character I had been developing... But then, I wanted the challenge as an actor to do a solo performance.”
The characters are distinctly defined by their vocals and physical qualities. Mackey admits that in the early rehearsals that she would mix and match the vocals and physical qualities, but after ten years of performance, she says it has become natural to flip the switch between characters.
“When we were in Halifax doing the show, there was a doctor in the audience, and after the show he came up to me. It ended up that he was a psychiatrist, and he said ‘you know, I can probably give you something for that.’”
After doing the play for ten years, Mackey says she’s still excited to tour with the show, because of her love of the story and of the characters she portrays.
“I feel like those characters have become good friends of mine now.”
This is a homecoming for Jake, as the character and the family are from the prairies. She decided to make him a prairie character as a tribute to the people who struggled during the great depression, as well as a tribute to the many people who joined up from the area during the war.
“I know during the war there were so many people unemployed right before the war started. It was significant in the prairies where people suffered so much. I remembered when I was reading during research for the play, there was a particular story that stuck with me, about a guy who remembers he and his brothers joining up because they needed a new pair of boots, because they were so impoverished and their farm wasn’t doing well.”
The All That Jazz Community Concert Band will be playing music from the 1940s to open the performance, and Mackey is thrilled by the Yorkton Arts Council and their work bringing the show to the city.
The performance will support the Yorkton Royal Canadian Legion. They will present a Fallen Hero print to the Legion at the performance, and profits from buttons sold will go to the Legion as well.
“One of the things we have discovered as we have toured has been how hard it has been for the Legions over the last twenty years as that generation has declined... A lot of Legions are suffering a lot, so for us it was a means of giving back to our community... We think of the play as a love letter to veterans, so to us it makes sense to give back to the Legions.”