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theatre by Gloria Loree JC/mily Carr didn't like the portrait her good friend Nan Cheney painted of her and a rift in their relationship developed. The fight between a passionate, eccentric artist and her well-meaning friend is the basis of a new play. The Passions of Emily Carr. by North Vancouver writer Patricia Mason. The play looks at Carr during the last few years of her life as she struggles to come to terms with the illness forever separating her from her beloved woods. The separation resulted in a late-blooming writing career and an intense, sometimes passionate, relationship with her editor. Ira Dilworth. Mason is probably one of the few Carr fans who finds the famous artist's writings more interesting than her magnificent paintings. Based on letters and documents. Mason wrote and produced an initial play (which she now refers to as a "work in progress"). Waler Under the Bridge. for the 1994 West Vancouver Harmony Arts Festival. That play reveals Carr as the eccentric artist who loves Ira Dilworth and scorns Nan Cheney and involves Ethlyn Trapp. the good doctor who becomes caught in up in this relationship triangle. ' Mason's interest in Carr's writings continued after her first play was mounted and she began to piece together real events from research in books, letters and journals. The Passions of Emily Carr is based on actual events between 1940 and 1945 and recreates authentic dialogue from archival letters and journals. Trapp is not a character in this second play and Mason feels it is a better representation of actual events. The focus of Emily's impatience and irritability is Cheney, whose controversial portrait of Carr caused them to fight. Cheney single-handedly mounted CarTS first solo show at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1938. Emily Carr's Personal Correspondance Provides Framework for New Play Cheney, a landscape artist who became B.C.'s first medical illustrator, lived on Capilano Road during the time period of the play. Together with Group of Seven contemporaries like Lawren Harris. A.Y. Jackson and F.H. Varley, she was a key figure in the Vancouver arts community of the 1940s. Dilworth was an artistic English professor who. as regional director of the C B C for many years, revolutionized radio arts programming. Despite Mason's keen interest in the local history and writings of Carr. she admits she did have another reason to write a second play about Carr. "I must confess. I wrote the new play for the purposes of the Wild Bird Trust." says Mason. Mason is on the board of directors for the Wild Bird Trust of B.C.. which is working to restore the Maplewood Flats Conservation Area in North Vancouver. Mason says Carr's love for nature is evident in many of her written works which is why it seems particularly appropriate for the Wild Bird Trust to feature a new play about her in the Return of the Osprey festival in May. The play itself involves a lot of local artistic talent. The director of the play is David MacLean. a North Jennifer Rioch in her role as Emily Carr in The Passions of Emily Carr, which will run at the Shaw Theatre in Deep Cove May 3-4. Photo: David Jennings