Prairie Nurse presents a diversity of Canadian experiences
Two Filipina nurses walk into Arborfield Memorial Hospital. You won’t believe what happens next!
Marie Beath Badian was inspired to write Prairie Nurse by real people, including her mom, a nurse who immigrated from the Philippines to Canada, Penny, another Filipina nurse, and Pat Hackett, a candy striper at the hospital. Prairie Nurse is bright, energetic, and bears all the markers of a TV sit-com—wild misunderstandings, over the top characters, and a happy ending.
Prairie Nurse centers around Penny (Isabel Kanaan) and Puring’s (Belinda Corpuz) arrival to Arborfield Memorial Hospital in Saskatchewan, and the mishaps that arise from the hospital workers’ inability to tell them apart. Lab technician Wilf Klassen (Matthew Shaw) falls head over heels for Puring—but after that initial love-at-first-sight moment, constantly confuses Penny for Puring. Although the show is packaged and sold as a joyful comedy, Badian sneaks in some dark truths about being an Asian immigrant in Canada. By juxtaposing the reality of being a Filipina-Canadian with the exaggerated plot and characters of the play, Badian points out how ridiculous the treatment of new Canadian immigrants can be.
Prairie Nurse is produced by Thousand Islands Playhouse in association with Factory Theatre in Toronto. It received its Toronto production earlier this year, and is in Gananoque until mid-September with the same cast and crew. Factory Theatre focuses on producing work that is “Fiercely Canadian,” specifically working with intercultural theatre artists. Prairie Nurse certainly fits the bill as one of the most Canadian shows I’ve seen all year, both in the stereotypical hockey-loving kind of way, but also in a more nuanced approach that shines a light upon the immigrant experience—an experience that is just as Canadian as hockey.
Although I can’t speak to the audience demographics of Prairie Nurse’s Toronto run, the audience at Thousand Islands Playhouse was largely of an older generation, and predominantly Caucasian. It is encouraging seeing Thousand Islands Playhouse making an effort to bring a diversity of theatre artists and programming to Gananoque, and Prairie Nurse is a very approachable show for all kinds of theatregoers. As a part of the preview night audience, I enjoyed watching not only the show, but also seeing the audience become more familiar with the often-marginalized story of Canadian immigrants.
Despite the fact that the script is written by an Asian-Canadian woman intending to poke fun at Canada’s behaviour towards immigrants, when watching a mostly white audience laugh throughout the play, it raises the question: What are we laughing at? Are we laughing at the ignorance and inability of the hospital staff to differentiate between the two Filipina nurses? Or are we laughing at the nurses themselves? It doesn’t necessarily help that Wilf receives a happy, romantic ending, with Puring still loving him despite the fact that he couldn’t tell her apart from Penny for weeks. As someone who was often at the receiving end of the “all Asians look alike” joke growing up, I was hoping to see more consequences to Wilf’s ignorance.
With recent movies like Crazy Rich Asians, Searching, and To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, audiences are proving that they will show up to support films that tell the stories of Asian-Americans, and it is incredibly inspiring to see the Canadian theatre community do the same. Although part of me wishes Prairie Nurse had been slightly more critical of the issues at hand, there is certainly a place for intercultural theatre that creates joy and brings audiences together.