Sliding for Home

Ian C. Nelson is Assistant Director of Libraries, University of
Saskatchewan; and Director, Saskatoon Gateway Plays, Regina Summer
Stage, and La Troupe du Jour.

Moher is well known on the Prairies, but produced infrequently outside
his home province of Alberta. The Third Ascent was performed at
Saskatoon’s Twenty-Fifth Street Theatre as part of the Carleton Trail
Exchange in 1988, and more recently Odd Jobs was produced by La Troupe
du Jour of Saskatoon in a Fransaskois translation, L’homme а tout
faire, by Laurier Gareau and Simonne Verville. Sliding for Home was
commissioned by Gerry Potter for Workshop West in Edmonton and is an
unabashed paean celebrating impresario John Ducey, who brought
professional baseball to the Prairies, and after whom the ballpark in
Edmonton’s river valley is now named.

Moher introduces the play by setting it “on the edge of reality in
Edgmonton [sic].” It is a vastly exuberant play with immediate appeal
for Albertans. Whether this musical—set in the 1940s, about a sports
fan striving to bring a professional league into the region—has wide
enough general appeal to stimulate other productions and perhaps to
attract other sports fans into the theatre remains to be seen. One
obvious impediment is that there is no indication in the text of the
availability of the music by collaborator Gerald Reid. The setting of
Sliding for Home may be “on the edge of reality,” but its spirit is
as authentic as inviting the local celebrity to pitch the first ball
(which is the direction for beginning the Act I First Inning).