Yellowknife (July 23/04) - The Wildcat Cafe served up the inspiration for Ben Nind's new play, which premieres next Wednesday at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre.

The play's intent is to bring slices of Northern history to life in a series of vignettes set in the legendary Yellowknife eatery.

The play was commissioned by the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau as part of a series of presentations of regional history.

The play has been translated into French and will begin performances at the Ottawa-area museum in September.

Nind's take on the Wildcat is of the cafe as a meeting place, where Northern characters meet and interact. The play jumps back and forth in time, presenting the cafe in all its incarnations.

"The owners of the Wildcat are our hosts," he said. "We talk to prospectors and bush pilots and geologists, new brides, cooks ... it's a wild assortment of characters."

The set, though not an exact copy of the cafe, uses the familiar Wildcat motifs of logs and rectangular windows to evoke the intimate feel of the cafe.

"When you go there and you're sitting having a cup of coffee and talking to someone across the table, you can also hear all these conversations going on around you," said Nind.

"There's an intimacy to that and you can become great friends with the person sitting next to you."

Actor Murray Utas was part of the boisterous all-male cast of the Hudson's Bay Boy. He said A Taste of the Wildcat, a relatively quiet, two-person play, is a different experience for him.

"Because I've got a girl beside me we get to do girl and boy things, like fall in love and get married," he said.

Writing a play where eight to 10 short scenes are squeezed into 35 minutes was a challenge for Nind, but he didn't lack for story ideas.

A descendant of Jake and Didi Woolgar loaned Nind her mother's diary, which inspired the first scene of the play, the reunion of the European bride with her Royal Canadian Air Force husband. The two met in Egypt during the war.

"We don't have Jake's words written down, but we have her take on him," said Nind.

The diary, plus family photos, chronicled the whirlwind romance that wound up in Yellowknife.

"We have a picture of him riding camels in Egypt and in the next picture he's standing over a cookstove with a pot," said Nind.

Rene Bourque, who recently performed in The Ballad of Isabel Gunn, said the diary was a great resource for understanding Didi's character.

"She was an artist, and the way that she speaks and the way that she writes is full of imagery," said Bourque.

Other stories Nind tackles in a little over half an hour include African American troops working on the Canol project, and residential schools.

Free performances of the play run July 28 to 31, and Aug. 4 to 6 at 8 p.m. in the auditorium of the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre.