ON STAGE: Castle on the Farm
Where: Paul Phillips Hall, 1923 Fernwood Rd.
When: March 18-19, 24 and 26, 7.30 p.m. (2 p.m. matinee on March 26)
Tickets: $18 from eventbrite.ca (March 18 is pay-what-you-can admission)
Write what you know — that’s the one piece of advice often given to new writers.
Alaina Baskerville-Bridges certainly took it to heart. Her first play, Castle on the Farm, is a true-life tale written from the perspective of her daughters, whose father was incarcerated following a violent incident on May 21, 2017.
The events of that day, which remain fresh for Baskerville-Bridges and her daughters, now 19 and 24, were covered extensively in the press. Dennis Salvador, from whom Baskerville-Bridges was estranged at the time, was arrested after firing a handgun at four teenagers in a car during a substance-induced psychosis.
Though he was originally charged with attempted murder — a bullet narrowly missed one teen’s head — Salvador pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in prison. He was released from William Head Institution last year.
Castle on the Farm covers the emotional aftermath of that fateful day. “I watched my daughters go through so much pain,” Baskerville-Bridges said. “But they also had to go to school, and they didn’t want anyone to know. It was so hard, because you just want to fit in as a kid.”
The incident took place when Baskerville-Bridges, who shared custody of her children with Salvador, was a fourth year creative writing student at the University of Victoria.
When Baskerville-Bridges started working on an early version of the script that would eventually become Castle on the Farm, Salvador was still in prison.
“I started writing it because I knew what I’d read in the paper, and I knew what was happening to my daughters. I didn’t tell anybody, so nobody knew what was happening. I started writing as therapy.”
After an early draft was named best one-act play in a 2018 Theatre B.C. playwriting competition, Baskerville-Bridges workshopped scenes from Castle on the Farm at The Belfry Theatre’s Spark Festival, in a program dedicated to shows in progress. After a pandemic-induced delay, Hapax Theatre is premièring Castle on the Farm tonight and Saturday at Paul Phillips Hall in Fernwood, with actor Rachel Myers playing all seven characters. Heather Jarvie is directing.
The story follows two fictional sisters, who are named Layla and Amber Ray, as they grapple with a world that has been turned upside down due to the actions of their father. Baskerville-Bridges, who was born in Manitoba but moved to Victoria in the mid-1980s during middle school, drew on some of her own history in the play, as well as real-life elements from the lives of her two daughters.
Writing Castle on the Farm gave the playwright an opportunity to write about some of the emotions she had bottled up inside for the preservation of her daughters. “The story doesn’t really focus on Dennis,” she said. “What you’re looking at is family, and how kids try to navigate being teenagers when heavy stuff is going on.”
She doesn’t begrudge Salvador for his actions; there is a deep sense of love between them, she said, even though they never married and had been living apart for years at the time of the incident. He battled substance abuse in the past, and his mental health issues were never fully addressed. “We’ve always had our ups and down, but we’re friends,” she said.
“We support each other. We’re family. I don’t feel like I’m betraying Dennis in any way, because I have his back. And if you watch the play, you’ll see that.”
A member of her extended family has schizophrenia, so Castle on the Farm proved therapeutic in other ways for Baskerville-Bridges. That brought about other personal lifestyle changes, all with healing in mind.
Prior to the pandemic, she volunteered in the inpatient unit at Victoria Hospice. Using her skills as a writer, she meets with patients to document their conversations as part of the charity’s Life Stories program. That experience resonated deeply with Baskerville-Bridges, who meets new writing challenges head-on — good news for someone who plans to tackle the movie industry next.
“I’m a person who tries to make sense of things, and who tries to create some sort of art out of that.”
