There's only one word for this: cowardice - The Chaff with Scott Stephenson

Wingham has developed a habit of generating civic mythology the way a faulty radio generates static: constantly, loudly and with the unsettling feeling that something intelligible is trying to break through.

 

At the centre of the current transmission is a statue of Betty White, justified through the pleasantly convenient detail that her grandmother, Margaret Hobbs, was born in Wingham.

 

From there, the idea has expanded, as ideas in Wingham tend to do when left unsupervised for more than six minutes.
The statue is now spoken of alongside the “Doc” Cruickshank Radio All-Stars Walk of Fame, a proposed procession of statued voices including Earl and Martha Heywood, Ernie King, Sharon Strong and a steadily growing cast of broadcast personalities who are slowly being promoted from memory to monuments.

 

At some point in this unfolding narrative, Cruickshank Park entered the conversation. Not through approval, not through process, but through the familiar Chaff tradition of simply declaring it emotionally selected and watching reality politely flinch. No vote. No consultation. Just narrative gravity doing what narrative gravity does.

 

The park, for its part, has not commented, but is widely suspected of minding its own business.

 

Hovering above this entire construction is the Artistic Director of the Blyth Festival, Gil Garratt, a man who has found himself in the increasingly awkward position of being adjacent to a story that refuses to remain non-theatrical.

 

Because now there is a second, louder idea: that this entire statue-and-radio-and-park situation should itself become a play.
Not inspired by events. Not loosely based on them. But aggressively about them, in the way a storm is about weather patterns and poor planning decisions.

 

And Garratt, by all accounts, is still in a state of what can only be described as artistic hovering. The posture of a man standing at the edge of a stage while the actors have already started rehearsing around him.

 

This is where The Chaff must offer a blunt interpretive note:

 

There is no longer a distinction between “idea” and “production.”

 

The township has begun performing the concept in real time.

 

Councils are writing dialogue without knowing it. Radio ghosts are being assigned blocking. And Cruickshank Park, whether officially involved or not, has already been typecast as a location.

 

Yet the Artistic Director remains in the familiar stance of careful evaluation, as though the situation might still resolve itself into something tidy, manageable and not structurally chaotic enough to require immediate theatrical intervention.

 

It will not.

 

At this point, refusal is not prudence. It is the theatrical equivalent of standing in a fully lit auditorium and insisting the house lights are still off because one prefers that interpretation.

 

And yes, the word “cowardice” is heavy. It tends to clatter when dropped into polite conversation. But it is beginning to fit uncomfortably well, Garratt, like a costume worn backwards in a dress rehearsal nobody admits is already opening night.

 

Because what else do we call the refusal to engage with a story that has already begun casting itself, staging itself and quietly installing Cruickshank Park into its set design through sheer communal imagination?

 

Meanwhile, the statue idea continues its slow conversion from suggestion into inevitability. Betty White’s connection to Wingham has become less a fact and more a lever. The radio personalities of the Walk of Fame are beginning to feel like they are awaiting a stone tailor to measure them for marble. The park, again, remains neutral, as parks do when humans start assigning them symbolic weight beyond their control.

 

And still, above it all, Garratt remains at the edge of the matter, holding what looks increasingly like a script that is writing itself faster than it can be declined.

 

If this is not shaped for the stage, it will not stop, it will simply go off-book. Cruickshank Park will keep behaving like a set that has already been built. The statue will continue arriving in ever more confident drafts until it looks less like an idea and more like something waiting on delivery.

 

And the play will still happen, just without the courtesy of asking. It will be performed in fragments across the township, assembled by rumour, memory and general fatigue, with or without a program.

 

At that point, Garratt’s only real role is whether he directs it while it can still be contained… or meets it later, already running, already cast, already deciding how he is written in.