When you think of Barkerville, you likely don't think of TV.
However, staff and reenactors at the historic site have been itching for an opportunity to demonstrate their acting talents in a new medium. That's where Barkerville: The Series comes in.
Most staff at Barkerville have had years — if not decades — of experience acting out historical scenarios and live shows in front of the thousands of guests that attend Barkerville every year, so the idea to host a series came naturally to those at the park.
“This show takes place in the modern times of Barkerville and the historical interpretation of the Gold Rush to showcase what life is like behind the scenes in this living history museum,” said Stewart Cawood, Manager of Public Programming and Media at Barkerville. “Focusing on the historical interpreters, but also a little bit on people who helped bring Barkerville to life. The show focuses on two new historical interpreters — Jay, who is an out-of-work TV actor from Vancouver, and Sarah, who comes to us from the Lhtako Dene Nation — both fictional characters played by actors who come to Barkerville to start working as new interpreters.”
The show is currently on its second episode of a six-episode run and features brand new perspectives with two different and unique fish-out-of-water perspectives from new faces to Barkerville.
Cawood told The Citizen that they have high hopes for the series to eventually be picked up by a major network.
“The biggest thing is that this is a fun marketing opportunity that is unlike anything that we've ever been able to do here in Barkerville,” said Cawood. “If people get excited about watching the series, then absolutely, we're hoping that they will want to come out here and visit, because we do notice that when a film is made that takes place in Barkerville, we do see an influx of visitors who want to come see what that location actually looks like in real life.
“We were hoping to capitalize on that with Barkerville the Series. The highest hope for it, of course, is that it will get picked up by a larger network or streaming service — but at this point, we're really just hoping to get the series out there.”
The series has been in consideration and development for years and has been heavily discussed since COVID-19.
Cawood told The Citizen how audiences have been reacting to the series so far.
"It's early days," said Cawood. “My hopes for it being well received by the public are certainly coming true at the moment. We've had a great reception, we've had lots of views on YouTube, and we still have four more episodes to put out for people to enjoy — so new episodes will be coming out every Saturday.”
The show itself was produced by the Barkerville Heritage Trust with support from Osisko Mining Development and Heritage BC, with talented artists and creators from across the North working on the series.
One of these talents was series writer and actor Danette Boucher, who has been working on this series since its original conception back in the COVID-19 days.
Boucher is one of the leads of this project and said that all the resources to make this series possible were found within Barkerville and the surrounding community.
“I've been a writer and performer in Barkerville for a long time,” said Boucher. “I've written a lot of Theatre Royal shows and written some solo shows and written lots of programming there. And I'm a writer and performer by trade — I was sort of the obvious choice to lead the project … We were thinking of having a writer's room and sort of going that conventional way that you do with television.
“We really had a long journey with this particular project, where we were thinking about bringing in people who were real industry insiders and professionals. In the end, we sort of just decided that we had everything we needed — within our community, within our surrounding extended community — and that we wanted it to be a project that was sort of a labour of love with the people that are from this area.”
She also told The Citizen what some of her inspirations were when it came to writing the series.
“How we came up with the idea was, at the time, we sort of thought of a lot of the TV shows that we like — Schitt's Creek, Ted Lasso — and I sort of brought those to the forefront, things like that, because I liked the idea of there being a kindness in the project,” said Boucher. “Those are the kind of series that sort of almost revolutionized the comedy genre in some ways, because it wasn't all about jokes, jokes, jokes — it was about the characters and the stories and people caring about each other and caring about their jobs and their work.”
Boucher carried these themes about pride and caring into one of the main characters.
“One of the themes in this series is that the character of Jay — who's the Hollywood actor who's gotten himself cancelled and comes to Barkerville to hide out but still be an actor — he doesn't think of it as a real, legitimate form of theatre, which is one of the things that really bothers the people who work in museum theatre. There tends to be a bit of a false narrative around it, with people thinking, well, maybe you couldn't make it in a different world, so you're in this world. He's the voice of that, and my character's the counterpoint, saying, you know, this is really important work and it might not look exactly like what you thought your acting career was going to look like, but it's really important and the people who do it for a living take it really seriously.”
She also told The Citizen how changes in Barkerville's storytelling influenced the creation of the other main character.
“The other one of the fish-out-of-water characters is this Hollywood actor, but the other one is a young Lhtako Dene woman who also comes to the site to work,” said Boucher. “One of the big goals in the museum field these days — and also in Barkerville — has been to expand the perspective of storytelling so that we're not just telling stories from the perspective of the settlers and the pioneers who came here. We're telling the stories of the women who came here, the Chinese people who came here, and the Indigenous people.”
Despite the shoot having to be done quickly and around Barkerville's operating hours, Boucher felt it was an incredibly rewarding experience.
“It was really fun and it was a really intense shoot,” said Boucher. “We handpicked the people we worked with because we wanted it to be fun and respectful, and it really was a great experience working with all these people. Even though you get really tired and you work around the clock a lot of times when you're doing a film shoot, we were all getting along and, you know, we had the feeling that we were doing something really special.”
You can catch Barkerville: The Series on Barkerville’s website: https://www.barkerville.ca/series/
