STRIKE! The Musical opens Thursday night at Rainbow Stage! Get an advance look!

Tuesday night I was fortunate to attend the preview performance of the latest musical at Winnipeg’s iconic Rainbow Stage.  Strike! The Musical is incredibly special, for many reasons (it has even inspired a motion picture adaptation!), and I’m excited for everyone else to get the chance to see it, starting Thursday night!  It’s the best time you’ll ever have getting a local Canadian history lesson!

“This was us. This is our story, it has something to say to the world,” said playwright and composer Danny Schur. “It makes me proud to be a Winnipegger.”

The movie musical “Stand” (which will be released this fall) is based on Schur’s original musical “Strike” which he wrote and composed in 2003 after learning about the Ukrainian immigrants involved in the labour protest. He researched their stories, went to their graves and a fictional “Romeo and Juliet” love story set against the backdrop of the strike was the result. The story follows a young Ukrainian immigrant who falls in love with a Jewish suffragette on the streets of Winnipeg amid social upheaval 100 years ago.

On May 15, 1919, 30,000 unionized and non-unionized labourers walked out of their jobs.  In the days and weeks that followed, racial and anti-immigrant tensions swirled around the strike with politicians and the business community calling it a Bolshevik conspiracy.

Near the end of the six-week strike police armed with guns and clubs charged through a crowd of strikers on a day that became known as Bloody Saturday. It resulted in two deaths and thirty workers wounded.

The movie’s director, Robert Adetuyi, said when he read the story, he connected to it as a Canadian and as an immigrant and that he knew the lessons from the general strike would really resonate with young people today.

“They are going to actually understand a little bit more of what it means to be an immigrant today and why we care about immigration,” he said.

The movie, “Stand,” was shot here in 2018 and will have its premier in Winnipeg in September. Around 500,000 copies will later be distributed by the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and labour organizations to Grade 11 students across the country.

Opening night for “Strike! The Musical” is Thursday, June 20th at Rainbow stage and those in attendance on Friday might feel an extra bit of electricity in the room as they witness the performance on the 100th anniversary of the strike’s conclusion on June 21, 1919.

Only one, minor, spoiler… get ready for the 3 child-stars of the show to completely STEAL it! 😛 SO GOOD!  Here’s a glimpse:

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