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By Carolyn Ryan

Woman is the lesser man, A nd all thy passions matched with mine Are as moonlight unto sunlight, And as water unto wine — A lfred, Lord Tennyson ‘ ‘Locksley Hall’ ’

The Lesser Man -— that may be the title, but it’s not

really how Michael Hen- nessey’s latest play sees woman.

_ Hennessey, who has been working at UPEI or its pre- decessor institute for 22 years and is now Registrar and Uni- versity Secretary, calls his first full-length play “a look at the interplay between tra- ditional views of male-female roles and the views held by a young feminist and Island famin brings into its home.”

The setting is Charlotte— town, the performances are April 11 and 12 at the Con- rederation Centre, the director is Ron Irving, and the source of funding is a

546000gram from the ida Council - the first in: the island Community Theatre

leT) Performance Group. The grant, announced last 3k and specific to the pro-

duction of the Island play- wright’s new comedy, recog- nizes “the contribution ICT has made to the development of professional theatre on Prince Edward Island and cites particularly its commit- ment to the development of local writers and the present- ation of Canadian plays,” an ’ICT press release said Thursday.

Rehersals have been under- way for two weeks and Hen- nessey has been attending readthroughs to spot pro- blems with the script as they arise. ’

“You watch the play, ask yourself all the hard ques- tions, then make sure you can answer them, while ensuring that your characters are es- senti‘ally the same people you started out with,” says Ron Irving of the rewrite process.

Featured in the play will be Sharlene MacLean, Glenda

' ICT wins $6000 grant to perform I la"

Landry,.Cathy Grant, Bill McFadden, and Travis Pratt.

The plot concerns the con- fusion arising when a tradi- tional Island family takes in two boarders from the re— cently constructed DVA (Department of Veteran’s Affairs) building in Charlo- ttetown. When one guest is a vocal supporter of wOmen’s rights and starts making sug- gestions as to the operation of the household, you know some pretty funny things can happen.

I-Iennessey began work on The Lesser Man last fall, after reading the above quote from Tennyson’s “Locksley Hall”.

“Having raised that poem, people ask me if I’m rein— forcing Tennyson or reacting against it,” says the full-

time Registrar, part-time author.

He smiles. “Well, it’s a little bit of both.”

I-Iennessey says the play was written by taking an hour between 12:30 and 1:30 most working days and retreating to a small room in the R0- bertson Library. .

“If you’re actually willing to work, you can do an awful lot in that space of

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time,” he says.

Hennessey has no plans to jettison his UPEI career in favour of professional writ- ing: “I’ll probably be here until retirement,” the former schoolteacher, (reporter, sports- writer, broadcaster ...) says.

Still, he doesn’t know if he would be able to keep up a good pace (he’s had two other, plays performed by ICT and recently had a book of short stories called An Arch for the King published by Ragweed Press) if he had to write all day long.

“There’s a certain disci- pline to writing. There was a time when I had to sit down, drunk, sober, or sick, and pump out 1000 words a day, six days a week,” Hennessey says. '

One suspects that he ' valued the experience, but _ wouldn’t want to return to it as a'livelihood. V ,

Local drama has been ; " given an injection of vitality H over the last few years with - the intrhduction of the Island Community Theatre’s New _ ' Voices one-act play competi- tion for local writers, also made possible by a grant from the Canada Council.

Playwright Michael Hennessey, author of The Lessor

Man _,,_____... .... taneous response on theth

of the audience,” Irving says.

“Local material does get are'bigger audiences, more a different reception. There interest, and a more instan-

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