Lovers of cowboy lore are in for a treat as The Banff Centre presents Cariboo Buckaroo, a one-man play about obscure B.C. history.
The production is by Matthew Payne, artistic director of Vancouver’s Theatre SKAM. Payne will also be at the centre for a residency to work on another production, My Memory’s Not So Good.
Cariboo Buckaroo will be staged at the Margaret Greenham Theatre on Oct. 8 at 4 p.m.
“It’s intended for an all ages audience, " Payne explained. “I wrote it with a bit more of a sensibility of some of the European children’s theatre I’ve seen, which is generally speaking a little more maturely.
“When I wrote the play, I imagined there’d be adults and some children in the room. It seems to have played well to ages eight and up. "
Cariboo Buckaroo is a fictitious story of a cattle drive that travels from the U.S. up to the Cariboo goldfields with three actual historical events identified along the way.
“The research came out of wondering who the first cowboy in B.C. was, " said Payne. “As I researched, I came upon historical stories that happened around the same time, and then that and the history of cowboying formed the story. "
The first story is of the Rennie Brothers, said Payne.
“They were one of the last groups of the Overlanders, who were a group of people that walked from Fort Garry, which is Winnipeg, west to British Columbia, " he said. “There was a party of three brothers and two other guys, both named John, and they left later than everybody else and got stranded in the snow in an area not that far from Banff.
“That’s told in the story as an epic cowboy poem, as if the cowboy’s riding around the herd at night. "
In the second story, Cariboo Buckaroo documents the tale of Cariboo Cameron.
“He was a miner and he and his wife Sarah were from Ontario. They went up to the Cariboo and started mining in Barkerville, " said Payne. “They lost two children and then Sarah died, and on her deathbed she made her husband promise that he would not bury her in the goldfields and he pledged to take her body back home. "
It was the middle of winter, so Cameron put her coffin in a frozen shed, said Payne.
“Then he struck it rich and became one of the richest men in Barkerville and then he took her home. It’s this amazing love story, a pledge on a deathbed that was honoured. "
The third story is of the Chilcotin War, which happened in 1864, and was a dispute between the territory and First Nations over the building of a road near Quesnel.
“That happened where I grew up, but we were never taught that story in school, and so I was fascinated when I read about it, " said Payne.
Though the subject matter is very serious, it is intended to be a comedy, he explained.
“But it’s a funny show – it’s a comedy and it’s all fairly light, " said Payne. “I’m playing multiple parts, but primarily an old hand who is leading the cattle drive, and he’s hired a young greenhorn, and is showing him the ropes and teaching him how to herd cattle. "
These tales of early B.C. history are the cultural backbone of the country, he said.
“When I started thinking about the history of cowboying in B.C. and found these actual historical tales, I felt like these were stories that made our country so rich and I wanted to bring those to life and tell those stories to people. "
This production at the Banff Centre will be the largest staging of the show.
“The theatre will actually be the largest that Cariboo Buckaroo has ever played in, " said Payne. “It’s a show I wrote for the Cariboo Chilcotin community and I knew a lot of the venues we were interested in playing were small community halls in rural locations, so it’ll be very nice to be in a theatre space. "
