Margaret, Alice and Bessie.
There were others, but they weren't fatalities. They were extorted, robbed, betrayed, impoverished, one even fled to Canada after exacting a bit of revenge - a bit of jail time - but there was no revenge for Margaret, Alice and Bessie.
There was, however, a measure of justice for these women. The man who killed them was discovered by Scotland Yard detectives using what was then, in 1915, a new police philosophy: forensics. He was hanged for his murders and his three victims were made the subject of a play in Canada.
In that theatrical way, Margaret, Alice and Bessie get to live once again each time the lights go up at Theatre Northwest during Drowning Girls, which opens Friday. The actors inhabiting these real life historical figures are Heather Morrison, Sarah Roa Canero and Lauren Brotman.
The three women were all murdered in the same way, which helped lead authorities to solve the crimes. The murder weapon in each case was a bathtub full of water.
The play truly goes beneath the surface of why. Why were three people so easily discarded? Why was it so easy for a man to have that much power over them all? And 100 years after his execution, why has so little been done to correct the imbalance?
The play is an act of overturning the gender drawer.
"Whenever there is any discussion about serial killings, if that's a news report or a movie or whatever, he's always the one who gets the attention. And it is almost always a man," said Morrison. "Drowning Girls flips that on its head. The really important people here are the victims and, as is too often the case, they are women. And he almost got away with it. We know some have gotten away with it. And we know murder is just the extreme example of how society still has a power imbalance where women too often end up in lower positions."
This play is not abnormal in the social commentary built into the themes of a script depicted by Theatre Northwest. But it is rare in that it is a mystery story, and a murder mystery at that. The three characters all meet in the afterlife and in their ghostly forms work out together how they ended up in their predicament. They don't all know all the facts, so they have to piece it together like a horror puzzle cut as jaggedly as the end of their own lives.
There is happiness and hope in the interactions of Margaret, Alice and Bessie, but such a story cannot be told without visiting some shadowy locations.
"I took an improv class. I'm trying to get better at comedy. But I'm just so drawn to the darker stuff," said Morrison is based out of Saskatoon where she is on the leadership team of Sum Theatre, a company busy primarily with productions in schools and in city parks. She is also the playwright of Thicker Than Water.
Morrison was someone who knew early in her youth that theatre was for her. After high school she got her degree in drama from the University of Saskatchewan. "I tricked my mom," she confessed. "I told her it was a double-major in drama and English but it slowly faded away from the English."
She is also a graduate of the Globe Theatre's Actor Conservatory Program, a 16-week intensive training regimen in Regina considered one of the best theatre development courses in Canada.
Now she is a nine-year veteran of the professional stage and loves the Saskatoon roots. She's grateful to have had a career there instead of migrating to the glitzier venues of Toronto, New York or London.
"The honest answer is, I love my city and it's small enough that I feel we can have an effect on it," she said. "The opportunities are endless there."
With full sincerity, she admitted she felt a sense of that from Prince George as well. This is her first time working on a professional production outside of Saskatchewan, but she deliberately lobbied to take part in this play. She had met TNW's artistic director Jack Grinhau years before when he came to Saskatoon as a guest of Persephone Theatre, and when she heard Drowning Girls was on his agenda for the 2016-17 season in Prince George.
"I pursued it," she said. "It is a great play for women. I'd seen it performed when I was a young pup, and I wrote a letter to the creators (Beth Graham, Charlie Tomlinson, and Daneila Vlaskalic) telling them how inspiring it was to see such strong creative voices given to women."
Now she is one of those voices, giving new spirit to those three emblematic women, three Drowning Girls, who died needlessly and mercilessly in 1913 and 1914, but did not die in vain.
The play runs until Feb. 15. Tickets are available now via the TNW website where you can secure your seats online, or in person at Books & Company.
