Fiction
I am a member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada Four of my plays may be purchased and performance rights bought by visiting the Canadian Play Outlet.
The South Simcoe Theatre chose my ten minute play, Going Up, as part of its 2024 Four Play: A showcase of play readings. The director and the actors did a wonderful job of bringing out the humour in this flirtatious situation. To read more about the performance and what it meant to me to have it chosen, please click the highlighted text that will lead to entries on my blog.
Breathe, a ten minute mini-mystery I wrote was presented as part of The South Simcoe Theatre’s annual Four Play, A Showcase of Play Readings, June 1, 2019. It was a wonderful experience and I am grateful to all involved.
One of the actors, Tim Norton, wrote about his experience and how an actor prepares for a reading. It helps explain this unique story-telling style of a play reading.
On June 5, 2016 The South Simcoe Theatre’s my short play, As the Wind Blows, as part of its annual four day play reading festival, Four Play. It was wonderful to hear the voices of the characters come to life. I am grateful to the actors, the director Nancy Knapp (also acted) and the theatre for offering such a great opportunity for writers and theatre-goers. I am honoured my play was selected from the entries. You can read more about As the Wind Blows below.
New Theatre of Ottawa, under the artistic direction of John Koensgen, chose Buying Time, for the 2014 Extremely Short New Play Festival November 19-30. The Extremely Short New Play Festival is a juried festival of plays under 10 minutes in length.
This professional production took place at the Arts Court Theatre in Ottawa. Buying Time is one of ten plays presented each of the fifteen performance times. All of the plays were directed by John Koensgen, and four actors filled the various roles.
The blurb for Buying Time reads: A young mother shops at the local small town store and finds out that her business is everyone’s business. What does she have to hide?
Read Reviews:
June 2, 2013, my short play, Of Mice and Men (Apologies to John Steinbeck), was presented to the public by as part of The South Simcoe Theatre’s annual Festival of Play Readings, Four Play.
As the Wind Blows, was endorsed by the Great Lakes Storm of 1913 Remembrance Committee based in Goderich, ON and sent to school boards along Lake Huron and Georgian Bay for possible classroom use. It has also been presented publicly.
Paul Carroll, committee member and author, sent this note as part of an introduction: This short play by Rosaleen is a simple presentation, easily staged and dramatized, offering two or three anecdotes as they actually occurred. The former shipbuilding town of Collingwood is the perfect setting.
I also write short fiction for children and for adults. I can write to a theme, or create fiction based on fact, as above. I have one published adult short story to my credit and include it below.
The limerick fits the farm theme, so I am adding it also.
I hope you enjoy them!
A Cow Named Cheesy
by
Rosaleen Egan
There once was a cow named Cheesy
Who always wanted to please me;
She stood nice and still,
The pail, she did fill,
And then she would bow and curd-sey.
Where Have all the Flowers Gone?
by
Rosaleen Egan
Published 2001,
Country Connection Magazine
They rip through my being like vultures through carrion. Powerless, I watch as bits of my past are wrenched from their place of history.
"Look at this, George," the woman with fierce hair shouts to her rummaging husband. She holds Harry's pitchfork as though she was a warrior holding a spear in triumph; her grimy hands violate the wood worn smooth by the grip of a labouring settler. "It would look great in the garden."
No doubt she means to leave it idling next to the obnoxious gnomes lounging in her flowerbed; such a mockery of the man who used the instrument to turn the compost, to loosen the dense spring soil, to clear the fields of their autumn harvest.
My view of the landscape has suffered great change. Lush, cultivated acres, and dignified stands of forest have been usurped by the lust of progress. In their place lie barren stretches of land where wisps of dirt swirl in the wind towards the growth of dense, obscene housing. And little by little suburban scavengers have desecrated this property, once the lifeblood of generations: a place of work, a place of security, hope and love.
The barn, generously assembled by a conglomerate of kind neighbours, has been obliterated. All that is left is crumbling foundation and few bits of barn board - an item treasured by the interlopers.
One stalked across the open field the other day. She'd been here before; this time she brought reinforcement. The pillage of the barn almost complete, they gushed at the retrieval of a workable piece of board.
"Oh. Wow. This one would be good. It's got lots of knots that the stain will bring out. And the dried flowers will add a lot."
"Sure, looks perfect. I could probably get two or three from that. I sold a bunch of these arrangements at the flea market on the weekend, you know."
"I'm not surprised. Seems everybody wants a bit of country in their places these days."
"Hmm...That's true, I guess... I think we got all we can get now. I don't see any more worthwhile."
"Right. Okay. You've got enough to keep you busy anyway." And they rambled off, oblivious to the origin of the loot under their arms.
No respect is shown this once honourable homestead. I ache recalling the
spring day Sarah and Harry, Mrs. and Mr. Kennedy, swung open the door with love shining from their faces. The home was a wedding gift from Dr. Gallagher to his only daughter. It was by no means equal to the wealthy home she was leaving behind but Sarah didn't mind. Bits and pieces of her deceased grandmother's furnishings mingled with a few of her own, making the newness less obvious, creating comfort and continuity.
A joint planting of a lilac bush next to the stone porch marked the initiation of this new life. Nourished and strengthened by the arrival of each new member of the Kennedy clan, it has survived. Under the May sun the lilac still blossoms; the wafts of fragrant air quietly rouse my memory and initiate melancholy.
I am desolate.
Gone are all those that cared for me. I have been abandoned to face my fate alone and must suffer the indignity of being stripped of all that is of meaning to me. Even the floorboards have been ripped out. The wooden slats that joined to hold the tender footfalls of loving inhabitants, that gleamed for the women who came to tea, and bounced to the step of dancers in celebration, are no longer with me.
Barely able to hold on to its mooring the heavy oak door groans in the lonely breeze. That which had opened widely in welcome to new brides and new children, closed tentatively behind young men as they went off to war, and solidly protected families from the assault of winter winds, now hangs mournfully on one hinge.
Gone is the scrollwork outlining the peaked roof; an elegance in which Sarah took great delight, cruelly torn off. The windows through which she watched for the return of her husband from the fields, the glass that reflected her children gleefully chasing butterflies and daring each other to go higher and higher on the wooden swing - smashed.
I stand naked and hollow.
The shade of the maple tree and the tenacious lilac are my only comfort in these final days. The man called George and his warrior wife are joined now in the hunt by a woman sporting a shiny purple jogging suit that makes noises each time she moves.
The dissection continues. She swishes her way in under the maple I saw grow from a sapling, and lunges her weapon of assault into the dappled undergrowth to root out periwinkle. It has thrived for years now over the spot where Sarah's children dragged their feet to slow the high-flying swing.
"This is great," she announces to the couple foraging near the barn. Smugly she continues through her nose: "I don't have to buy plants now. I was over the other day and dug up some peonies, a few irises and three or four lilies. It's kind of a shame though - what's happening. I can't believe people are dumping their garbage here."
"Yeah, it's too bad," the two mumble absently as they scour the heaps of debris for something they consider valuable.
Sarah had a passion for gardening. A house full of children on farmland,
however, brought a great deal of work and not much time for supposed idleness. In the summer months, she highlighted the days with stolen moments among the flowers. The exchange of wet clothes for dry on the line completed, Sarah found herself drawn by the scent of blossoms and the beckoning of the swaying hollyhocks. Her small children, never far away, drew closer by the sight of their mother enjoying the yard. Quick lessons on botany were given before she straightened from the cultivating and returned to compulsory chores.
Sarah savoured these shared moments, but basked in the delight of a moment alone in the dusk, the sleeping children left to their dreams, to put her hands in richness of the soil.
"This would make a great planter," George proclaims to his wife. "We can clean it up, throw a few flowers in it and put it on the front porch."
"Maybe," his mate replies, critically eyeing the oval tub. "The only thing is, it looks a bit too rustic for the house. We can try polishing it, I guess."
"I don't think you should do that," chimes the woman in the noisy jogging suit. "It would ruin its appeal."
"Ya think so? I don't know George, we better take it anyway 'cause if I change my mind it might not be here when we come back."
The copper boiler that bubbled brightly on the black stove is charred and dented. Sarah worked hours to fill and refill the tub, and many more to scrub clothes, chafing her hands and challenging her muscles.
From a thing of labour to thing a love, the tub gave the Kennedy children an exciting summertime alternative to bathing indoors. Sarah and Harry put aside the hard work to join in the laughter and the splashing of the cool water. Squeals of delight at the freedom and family fun resonate from the battered boiler.
The sound nudges me from gloom.
My mind moves from the distant past to the past most recent. Reflecting on the fate of the copper boiler, I decide a prominent place on someone's porch for this relic of cherished history is a good thing - a shrine, perhaps.
In the isolation of my last hours, I reconcile with my destiny. Facing the domination of a roaring bulldozer, I stare compassionately across the dusty wasteland at the group of sterile houses huddled together in false intimacy.
They will no longer come, those urban marauders, for all has been removed from the dwelling of its beginning. I think of them carting away their pastoral riches and my anger mellows; they have gleaned a connection to another time, another life.
My legacy limps on.
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