Who are you and what is your role in this production? Heather Morrow, I play Bertha Schwartz in the show. She has two children who work at the sweatshop in the show, Margaret and Max.
What is your background in theatre? With Walterdale? Oh wow. One of my very first plays, Crushed, was produced at the Walterdale in 1997 — my dramaturge was Vern Thiessen. I’ve done shows for the ADFA One-Act Festival, and I was in Wyrd Sisters in 2011. Outside of the Walterdale, I’ve written and self-produced plays at the Edmonton and Calgary Fringe Festivals, I did a show at the Edinburgh Fringe when I lived in Scotland, and developing a BIG script with an amazing group of people, which I’m hoping to get funding to work on.
Why do you think people should come see The Triangle Fire Factory Project? Besides being a stunning show to watch, the subject is especially relevant now. Too many of the clothes we buy now are made in the same conditions that our characters work in, but in other countries…the problems moved because workers in North America got sick of working like that, and I fear we all forget that. As we hear on the news everyday HERE thought, we’re also seeing more incidents of new immigrants or people who simply LOOK like they’re from “somewhere else” being harassed or made to feel lesser, which is what happened to the many, many, new immigrants who were taken advantage of by shops like that in the show. It’s important for people to see a show like this and remember that treating others as less doesn’t simply hurt feelings, it’s dangerous.
Since this show deals with workplace ‘issues’…
– Worst job you ever had, and why? I worked a very strange temp job for a while, for a warehouse company that supplied big rolls of saran-wrap-like stuff to different industries. I had no real training on what I was meant to be doing there, and one day, that water was off in the building but they didn’t shut down until the middle of the day. I’m sure that’s how I caught my first full-blown flu in years — it took me six weeks to completely shake it.
– Funniest thing that ever happened to you in a workplace situation? When I lived in Scotland, I worked in admin at a law firm. Part of my job was to order office supplies for the executives. One day my BIG boss walked in and nonchalantly said, “Could you order me some rubbers?” It took everything I had to not shriek, and process what he’d said — he meant ERASERS. When he left, the other girls sitting with me asked why I was so red. After I explained we got nothing done for the rest of the morning because we were all laughing so hard.
– What was your first job? How old were you and what did it entail? Retail. I was a salesperson in a kitschy clothing store in a very dead mall in Calgary, the summer before I started university in Edmonton. I was 19.