Playing house In the gravelled school yard, we used to play house at recess and after lunch. We would outline the rooms and doorw

Playing house

In the gravelled school yard, we used to play house at recess and after lunch. We would outline the rooms and doorways with rocks and re-enact family scenes.

Although my sisters and I often played at home, with whoever was youngest taking on the role of the baby, it was always more entertaining to play with children from other families: the conflicts seemed more exotic than our own and families played out even common scenes in dramatically different ways.

As we got older, the games focused more on food preparation, especially when we found a disintegrating tree trunk in the little woods beside the playground. The wood of the trunk decomposed in a variety of ways - I suppose, depending on which micro-organisms were digesting the different portions, ranging from stringy orange fibres to stuff like crumbly, black coffee grounds. We made many attractive “casseroles” using ingredients from various parts of the tree—inedible of course!

We weren’t alone in this. Playing house seems to be a universal pastime. Rachel Cooper, who grew up in Ontario, has written “Come and Get It!”

They needed a cook.

I said I could do it.

Made up a great menu -

delicious, I knew it!

Roast tree trunk, poached sand

and a rock - I could stew it -

But when I served dinner

nobody could chew it!*



Playing house is versatile. Stephanie’s school yard held some well crocks, wherein she was “married” several times (?). Almost everyone can remember building some sort of hut with brush and furnishing it with “found” accoutrements. One of the last times I played the game, just after MaryAnn’s grandfather died and was buried from his home, it could have more properly have been called “Funeral.” Then there was that trip, played out with haughty accents, to Spain to purchase handmade lace.

Maybe we never really stop playing? Playing can become... a play! Now Rachel and I, along with Paul Abela, Sharon Burnett and Nancy Henry; are acting out a family drama/ comedy**. We’re middle-aged (or nearly there) now, but not much changes: there’s food, but some of us can’t eat it; there’s a funeral, but it’s over before our playing starts; preparations are being made for the trip of a lifetime. With the help of family, we navigate some pretty big rocks in the road.

And a lot changes! As children, we played at Wedding, but not Romance. We made ourselves laugh at our fears, but didn’t really overcome them. We thought life was a thing that happens to a person. It didn’t occur to us we could steer our course with as firm a hand to the tiller as these people do, deciding in some surprising ways on fresh directions. On a homey set designed by Phoebe and Franklin, with Tracy Churchill, Susan Monro, Colette and Mollie Van Meekeren keeping track of a mountain of props; “The O’Conner Girls” is quite an advance from the rock-lined walls of our school yard houses!



* From a collection, "If a Hippo Could Fly,” by Rachel Cooper ©2006



** www.centrestagetheatre.ca, “The O’Conner Girls” by Katie Forgette, directed by Phoebe T-Sherrard