Mike Heffernan, Salty Ink’s unofficial “Newfoundland Emerging Author of the Year,” released two books in 2009: he is was the man behind the great anthology Hard Ol’ Spot, featuring the likes of Michael Crummey and with a foreword by Kathleen Winter, in addition authouring Rig. If you haven’t yet heard of Rig: An Oral History of the Ocean Ranger Disaster, you should have. Hailed by Lisa Moore as “a powerful and important book,” and a recent nominee for the Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing, Rig is a stellar, well-crafted, sensitive, heart-wrenching oral history of the 1982 Ocean Ranger disaster — the worst maritime disaster since the Second World War. Heffernan approaches oral history masterfully, like the art form it is, with empathy, understanding, and professionalism. He is currently at work on a new oral history, sure to garner a great diversity of readers: The Other Side of Midnight: Taxi Cab Stories.
Writer, critic, editor, and playwright Joan Sullivan recently adapted Heffernan’s Rig, and Trinity’s very popular Rising Tide Theatre will be putting it off from July 3rd to September 11th. Salty Ink found the adaptation of Rig an interesting move, and certainly a great project. So I asked Joan about it.
Salty Ink: Adapting a work of non-fiction cannot be as straight forward as adapting a work of fiction. What were some of the challenges, and what about this book drew you to this challenge?
Joan Sullivan: I had been reading a lot of documentary theatre as part of some studies I’m engaged in at MUN (M. Phil program). I am really fascinated by works like “Talking to Terrorists” or “Stuff Happens” — these are also called “verbatim theatre,” as they are scripted/sculpted from interviews and research. When I read Rig, the voices were so powerful I knew it could work. My own challenge was to rearrange the words so the event unfolded chronologically. Mike Heffernan had done such a superb job with the interviews, they were already so crafted, so calibrated, that the play came together very quickly. In fact I feel in some ways as if it just passed through me, that I didn’t write anything at all.
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And then I caught up with Mike himself.
Salty Ink: Tell us about the inspiration for the book, the process of collecting people’s stories and writing the book, and how great it must feel to have your first book adapted.
Mike Heffernan: I grew up with the Ocean Ranger disaster as part of my broader family history. My father’s cousins worked on the rig and in the Mobil office here in St. John’s. Ron Heffernan’s body was one of the twenty-two recovered. His story was kept alive by my mother. I wrote a short story about the rig, and realized there was next to nothing written on the disaster. I had studied oral history in university and my writing was going in that direction. I thought, Will anyone connected to the disaster even want to speak to me? I distinctly remember calling that first person and feeling a real sense of trepidation and anxiety. But I was lucky. I was only turned down twice during a process which lasted the better part of two years. Interviewees were open and honest and frank; most of the people I wanted to speak with, remarkably, still lived in St. John’s. It was emotionally exhausting. It weighed heavily on me to get the stories right, to be honest, while creating a work of creative non-fiction.
When I think back on my experiences, it’s as a participant. I sat in living rooms, kitchens, coffee shops and board rooms listening to people speak. Grief has a way of attaching itself to you, and I took those feelings home with me. They were often terribly upsetting. But to hear an actor speak those words will be something pretty special. I’ll be an observer this time. And theatre is a shared experience, not the sequestered experience of writing. I really don’t know how I’ll react.
I’m very grateful that Rising Tide Theatre picked up Joan Sullivan’s adaptation. Right from the start, I envisioned my book on the stage. I made some attempts with several other writers to create an adaptation, but with no experience in that area, felt doomed. That’s when Joan stepped.
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