The Swamp Donkey Musical Theatre Society is back providing quality theatre in Bragg Creek.
The society is gearing up to kick off its seventh season with the musical The Hello Girls from Oct. 18 to 27.
From New York to Paris, from ragtime to jazz, The Hello Girls chronicles the story of America’s first women soldiers in this new musical inspired by history. These intrepid heroines served as bilingual telephone operators on the front lines, helping turn the tide of the First World War.
They then returned home to fight a decades-long battle for equality and recognition, paving the way for future generations.
The cast and production team hail from Bragg Creek, Cochrane, Calgary, Canmore and Airdrie. Tickets for The Hello Girls and all Swamp Donkey’s musical productions are available at www.swampdonkeytheatre.ca.
Since 2018, the society has been providing quality musical theatre productions and educational opportunities for aspiring actors and production crews in and around the Bragg Creel area.
Artistic director Melanie Baux said it’s an important story about how women were enlisted to run the phone lines in France in the First World War, long before western society had contemplated sending women off to war.
The play focuses on a small group of Americans.
“The five of them, called the Hello Girls who were the telephone operators who went over to France to fight, right at the front and they fought to get there. And they were army staff, and then they came back and we're not recognized by the American Government for 70 years,” she said.
“So it's a pretty powerful story. They were actually not recognized until 1977, and only one of the featured five survived. The rest had passed away,” she said.
“It's a really, really cool, powerful story about making history and applying that to everyone's lives today. But it's great, and it's contemporary. So the music is pretty contemporary.”
Baux also plays protagonist Grace Banker, chief of the first female telephone operators unit of the US Army Signal Corps. The unit was set up in 1917 on the orders of General Pershing, who wanted skilled telephone operators to facilitate effective communication between the American Expeditionary Forces in Europe. The best operators at that time were women, so that's who Pershing set out to recruit.
“They had to be bilingual and they had to be able to operate the switchboards quickly, and the men weren't. The army men weren't trained for that,” Baux said.
Baux said the production includes the musical aspect, a great story, some humour and even a dash of romance.