The game of life The Dressing Room comedy/drama gives a true-life peek into hockey's sacred place and the life of one former player who was waylaid by alcohol on his way to the big league
MARY MACKAY The Guardian
It’s one thing to come up with an idea to raise money for a worthy cause such as the Wyatt Heritage Properties in Summerside.
However, it’s a whole different game to lay one’s life and its trials and tribulations bare for all to see on stage.
But that is what former hockey player Paul MacWilliams of Summerside has done for The Dressing Room, a comedy/drama which is set to be staged twice at the Centre Belle-Alliance Theatre in Summerside on Sunday, Nov. 16, and Thursday, Nov. 20.
On the dramatic side, the play lays bare MacWilliams’ waylaid possible journey to the NHL in the 1960s and his struggle with alcohol; on the comical end, it takes a humorous peek into the very private dressing room of an old-timers’ hockey team.
“It’s just talking about what happened through those years, but it is a success story, there’s no doubt about it,” MacWilliams says of The Dressing Room, which was written by Marlene Campbell, who is cultural programs assistant with Wyatt Heritage Properties which is producing the play.
The catalyst for the play’s creation was the closure of Cahill Stadium in Summerside after a historic rink run. MacWilliams was recently retired from his position in audience development and marketing with Wyatt Heritage Properties but knew the heritage, art and culture organization could always use a new fundraising opportunity.
“I played all my hockey (at Cahill Stadium) as a young boy growing up, and there were a lot of memories floating around in my head. I was just out for a walk one day and the thought came to me that this would be a great idea for a play,” remembers MacWilliams.
“We would call it The Dressing Room, and it would include (the time in) the dressing room in between periods of a hockey game because there is often more action in the dressing room than there is out on the ice.”
MacWilliams bounced the idea off Campbell, who has a knack for writing. She suggested they expand the concept to include a dramatic profile of MacWilliams’ life.
“I was a little hesitant, yeah, but we needed money (at Wyatt) and we wanted to use it as a fundraiser,” MacWilliams says.
“And Prince Edward Island being a small place, everybody knows everybody else’s business and everybody knows that I am an alcoholic. I’ve been sober for 17 years now, so that’s no secret, and I don’t mind people knowing it if it’s going to help somebody in the meantime to reach out for help or to get some help. I’m fine with that.”
The Dressing Room stage is divided between MacWilliams’ character, who is played by veteran P.E.I. actor Bill McFadden, and the old-timers’ team in the dressing room as they prepare for their last game at Cahill Stadium. Actors Vernon Campbell, Thane Clarke, Albert Gaudet, Don Purich and Wayne Murphy play the team.
“The setting is the last game in the Cahill Stadium before the wrecking ball,” Campbell says. “So the men are playing their very last game and Paul used to be one of their team members until he had a heart attack and couldn’t play anymore. They all start reminiscing and having fun and then Paul is over in his own dressing room, he’s more serious about what he’s reminiscing about than the guys are.”
That reminiscence starts with MacWilliams’ childhood playing hockey at that same stadium venue. By his early teens, MacWilliams’ future looked very promising.
He was invited to a hockey training camp in Niagara Falls, Ont., in the early 1960s for a junior team. He was in good company with the likes of Bobby Orr, who was the youngest player at that camp.
Scouts from teams like the Montreal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs took an interest in MacWilliams. He went to a camp in Montreal the next year and ended up with the Halifax Jr. Canadiens in 1965.
“I was the leading scorer and I was doing good, and to keep peace in my family I decided to go to St. Dunstan’s University and play hockey there — getting an education was the idea,” MacWilliams says.
“At that time, I also had the opportunity to go to Montreal and play with the Junior Canadiens in Montreal, which I didn’t do. It might have been the turning point. I don’t know how things would have turned out, but all through this I’m displaying symptoms of alcoholism.”
The turbulent times were ongoing. He had been suspended once from the Halifax Canadiens for drinking.
“(And) when I was 16 I wrote off two cars when I was drinking and people were just pushing it under the rug so to speak. No one knew how to handle it or what to say to me. There didn’t seem to be that much help around at the time anyway, and whether I would have listened to it or not I have no idea,” he says.
After flunking out of St. Dunstan’s, the then 19-year-old headed off to Newfoundland to play for a senior hockey league, which at that time was made up of ex-professionals. His coach, former New York Ranger Nick Makoski, wondered what he was doing there.
“He looked at me after the game one night and said, ‘What the hell are you doing here in Newfoundland when you could be playing Jr. A hockey someplace and making a career for yourself?’ And I said, ‘I have no idea,’ which I didn’t. I was into my addiction and I was lost.”
A few years later he was invited to play with a semi-pro team in Nashville, Tenn., but a layover in Toronto and a short visit with friends there turned into a much longer stay.
“I thought I would drop in and say hello because I had an eight-hour layover. The eight hours turned into a week or 10 days. It was a drunk is what it was. And I never did make it to Nashville,” MacWilliams says.
“It’s funny, I was looking through my old scrapbook the other day that my mother kept for me and there was a little piece in the hockey news about the Nashville Rebels.?One person had said ‘A defenceman by the name of Paul MacWilliams could end up being the dark horse for the team this year.’ But (I) never made it. (I) ended up back in Newfoundland.”
His potential hockey career was rapidly fading. By the age of 24, the dream ended.
“I guess subconsciously I would have known going to Newfoundland that they were paying me, I could make a decent dollar, play hockey and drink.
“I was young enough and perhaps healthy enough starting out that I could still do that, bounce back and still perform half decently. But after a while it catches up with you. So when I came home from Newfoundland I was in the late stages of alcoholism.”
He made the unfortunate choice of working at a Summerside lounge. After a few years, the owner, who was a friend, approached him to discuss his drinking.
“It was hard for him to do. He said, ‘Paul, I think you have a drinking problem.’ And I said, ‘Well if you want to let me go for something I’m doing, you go ahead but don’t give me any bulls**t that it’s got anything to do with drinking.’ You’re in deep denial when you have an addiction.”
They soon parted ways.
The road ahead was long, but MacWilliams stopped drinking 17 years ago at the age of 44.
“It became a matter of life and death. If I was going to remain on the planet I had to do something about my drinking,” says MacWilliams, who checked into a treatment facility in Calgary for five months to accomplish this personal goal.
Hockey reappeared in his life in the form of the old- timers’ team until a heart attack forced him to the sidelines.
“Often people would say to me, ‘Paul, do you miss playing hockey?’ and I’d say, ‘Not at all, but what I really miss is the guys in the dressing room and the stories and everything that go along with it.’ “
This is the second time round for The Dressing Room, which resonated with people when it had a single showing last fall.
On stage last year, McFadden was in the groove of his MacWilliams’ character.
“I identified with a lot of his stuff in my own life, having a similar thing in my own career and how a lot of times alcohol really pushed me way off the path that I should have been on.”
For MacWilliams, revisiting his life in one onstage swoop was a jarring at first.
“I was really nervous before it started. I was kind of sitting at the back of the (theatre), not mixing in with the rest of the crowd. I’m close to the door because I might make an exit. Then when the curtain went up and the people started laughing . . . , it was like taking a piano off your shoulders,” Mac-Williams says with a smile.
Vernon Campbell, who plays one of the old-timers in the hilarity of the dressing room says, “This is a play about far more than hockey. This is a play about life.”
If you go
Fast facts
The Dressing Room, produced by Wyatt Heritage Properties, is scheduled to hit the stage once again on Sunday, Nov. 16 and Thursday, Nov 20 at Centre Belle-Alliance in St. Eleanors.
The two-act play is a comedy/drama that takes a revealing peek into an old-timers’ hockey team dressing room at Cahill Stadium in its final days. Off limits to anyone other than the players, the dressing room becomes the place where men lay down their guard, open themselves up to intimacy, friendship and the freedom of unconditional acceptance. They attempt to keep what happens in the dressing room behind closed doors.
The locally written play has used the life and hockey career of Summerside native Paul MacWilliams as its primary inspiration.
The Dressing Room will appeal to a wide spectrum of audiences as they find themselves drawn into the story being revealed onstage. Call 432-1298 for tickets.
Last year’s single presentation of The Dressing Room raised about $10,000 for Wyatt Heritage Properties.
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kevin ellsworth from summerside, pei writes: thanks paul wheather you know it or not you helped me a lot over the years,,,good stuff
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