Rita Deverell's Big Ease Big Squeeze

Rita Shelton Deverell, American born playwright, actress and journalist has been a powerhouse in the Canadian media scene in her own right. She is the woman who founded the Vision Television Network that brought diversity and spirit in the media to new heights. Since her retirement from active 9-5 work, Deverell has set her sights on one of her first loves, acting and she is doing a fantastic job of it.

For the third consecutive year Deverell, former journalism professor at the University of Regina, has participated in the Winnipeg Fringe Festival and each year her act has been listed in the top-ten. She must be doing something right.

I saw Deverell's first and third shows. The title of her first show was "Smoked Glass Ceiling." That was entertaining and informational as well. It was a show about women and the proverbial glass ceiling they hit at certain levels within male dominated companies and organizations. She used her own experience of being tactically forced out from her Vision Television Executive Producer position, to talk about women and glass ceilings. Somehow I missed the second "McCarthy and the Old Lady." I was determined not to miss the third.

Unlike most Fringe plays, Deverell tackles important, serious subjects but with grace and humor in the 45 minutes allotted to each performance.

This year's title "Big Ease, Big Sleaze," sounded like a gangsta play but that was far from it. "Big Ease, Big Sleaze is the story of six zany characters, one of them Canadian, who chose to do just that. They are ordinary people whose humor and heroism will move you beyond cynicism to laughter, to tears, and hope," according to the press release Deverell circulated, July 2, 2008.

Big Ease, Big Sleaze tackled the dynamics of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that almost wiped out Louisiana from the face of the earth. Lots of stuff went down during that time. There were those who tried to take advantage of the situation, those who were more concerned about saving stuff than people's lives and those who were there to help like good neighbors.

Originally from Austin Texas, Deverell moved to Canada in 1967 and has been a force in the media for most of those years. She has garnered many awards including, Order of Canada, named to the Canadian Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame and MacLeans Magazine's Honour Roll of Outstanding Canadians.

Deverell said when Katrina hit New Orleans, that as a black woman from the South "I suffered nightmares from the endless photos of Katrina's dead". She said the idea for the plot was born "in my soul" after her Aboriginal colleagues convinced her that the same death and destruction could be and is visited on them, said Deverell the then News Director of the Aboriginal People's Television Network headquartered in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

The venue for this one-woman act, directed by Cairn A. Moore, was the Exchange Community Church a beautiful heritage building within the Exchange District at 54 Albert.

The opening scene was at a work site. There was wheel-barrow and people who supposedly were there to work and help others. Deverell with a cap turned backwards, sat slumped in the wheel-barrow and laughed her head off. That was funny.

Deverell played all the parts wonderfully with costumes in tow which in spite of its serious nature lightened the mood with some chuckles at the idiosyncrasies of the characters. She moved seamlessly through the journey from one character to the next. There was an interesting interchange between an old gentle Black man and a young blond who after a rocky start ended up being each other's friends and teaching each other some valuable life lessons of hard work, integrity and friendship.