Big Fiddle Players haul “Coal And Steel” to Louisbourg Playhouse, July 20 & 21

The Big Fiddle Players return with more performances of their popular song and monologue show, Coal and Steel: Work And Protest, at the Louisbourg Playhouse, Saturday, July 20, and Sunday, July 21, at 8 pm both nights.

Combining familiar songs and characters along with new material especially written for this show, Coal and Steel is a worker’s eye approach to Cape Breton labour history.

The show had a successful opening three performance run at St. Patrick’s Church Museum over the 2012 Labour Day Weekend (an appropriate time to perform it). This spring, Coal And Steel received a standing ovation when it played at Halifax’s Bus Stop Theatre as part of the May Works Festival.

The show brings alive real life characters like labour leader J. B. MacLachlan and fictional folk like the distressed mother sending her son down into the Pit for his first shift as a “trapper boy”. The Parade of Concern that resecued the Steel Plant from closure is vividly recalled as well as a rowdy Christmas Eve at the Plant.

Songs include favourites like Allister MacGillivray’s “Coal Town Road” and the Cape Breton Summertime Revue’s “Company Town” as well as new songs by Kevin Kearney and Ken Chisholm.

Megan MacDonald, who developed the concept for the show and is part of the cast, says “I think the Louisbourg Playhouse is a great venue for the show because of its beautiful history and intimate design. I hope the location of the venue will allow us to share our stories, which I feel are at the very heart of the human condition, to audience members from Cape Breton and all over the world.”