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Trout Stanley
is the story of the Ducharme Twins
and what happened to them on their thirtieth birthday which as it
happens is also the tenth anniversary of their parents' unseemly
and untimely double-deaths.
Grace and Sugar Ducharme live in a remote cabin on the outskirts of Tumbler Ridge between Misery Junction and Grizzly Alley in Northern British Columbia. The Ducharme Twins began life as triplets but a tragedy occurred in the birth canal where they cheated death by two minutes and four minutes consecutively. It should be noted here that these women look nothing alike. Nothing. Sugar is a fainter and a demure agoraphobic while Grace's demonstrative beauty and unrelenting personality have so beguiled the folks at Stan's Western Gear & Shooting Range that they have featured her as their new pin-up girl on the Billboard at Four Corners; the one everybody has to pass coming or going out of town. Sugar is president of Sugar Ducharme & Associates; a one-woman corporation specializing in the design and manufacture of figurines and other homemade items. A business she operates from the cabin. Grace is the proprietor and keeper of the local dump; a job she inherited from her father before his untimely end. As has happened on every one of their last nine auspicious and calamity-filled birthdays; there's been a murder. This time it is an independently brazen exotic dancer (and local Scrabble Champion) who was last seen leaving Rodeo Bob's Steakhouse Emporium And Nude Dancers at 3:30 am at which time she insisted on walking home, despite the torrential rain. Although local authorities have reiterated the fact that ladies of the night are prone to vanishing; foul play is suspected. And as coincidence would have it, and as has happened on every one of the last nine birthdays; Grace Ducharme finds the body. Into the Ducharme Twins' universe comes a man called Trout Stanley, whose parents drowned before they could explain why they named him after a fish. He arrives at the cabin's window while Sugar is home alone. Against all of Grace's warnings Sugar opens the door and lets him into their world. She immediately abandons everything for love which is something Trout Stanley has in abundance. Within hours, Trout Stanley splits these never-before-married virgins in two. The resulting explosion is deafening. Dubbed “Yukon Gothic”, Dey’s writing is lyrical, evocative, sensual and compelling in its power; but nonetheless delivers enormous charm and humor. Drawn from her experiences tree-planting in Northern Canada, the play resonates with the almost mythological characters and circumstances found in communities just on the edge of nowhere. Unique, passionate, and following its own set of rules, "TROUT STANLEY" inhabits a world much like that of the Coen Brothers and Sam Shepard, while very much being its own. At its epicenter, in Dey’s own words, is “our one reigning mystery, our most transformative force, our one common wish: love.” |