by AMY BARRATT

When David Gow was in Grade 2, his teacher told him he was going to write a play. "She had a talent for recognizing her students' strengths and channelling their energy," Gow says admiringly. The seven year old got his parents to write down the dialogue he dictated to them, and later saw his work performed at the school.

Thirty years later, the success of Gow's plays, especially Cherry Docs (1998), means that he is able to live where he likes: Montreal and the Eastern Townships. But if Gow isn't exactly a household name here, it's perhaps because his work has rarely been produced in the city he calls home. His second play, The Friedman Family Fortune, was produced at Centaur in 1996, but Cherry Docs, which has been mounted about two dozen times around North America and abroad, has never been performed here - until now. And even now, the show opening tonight, Nov. 6, is part of a tour of eastern Canada by a Halifax company, rather than a Montreal production.

Bunnies in the Headlights Theatre first mounted Cherry Docs in Halifax last fall. This fall, their production was the season opener of Dartmouth's Eastern Front Theatre. It then had dates in Moncton and Fredericton. The production is directed by Bunnies co-founder Christian Barry, who is also a current directing student at the National Theatre School. It stars Halifax actor Gordon Gammie and Toronto-based Conor Green.

The play is about a skinhead charged with murder and the Jewish legal-aid lawyer appointed to defend him. The title is an abbreviation of the phrase "cherry red Doc Marten boots," Docs being the preferred footwear of skinheads long before becoming the preferred footwear of everyone else in the early '90s. The play was inspired by a number of hate crimes that made the news during Gow's years in Toronto, and the relationship between a lawyer and his client seemed to him to have a lot of dramatic possibilities.

Gow studied theatre performance at Concordia in the '80s and appeared in Biloxi Blues and The Chain at Centaur, both in 1988. Then, like so many of his peers, he made the move to Toronto where he "did okay" as a stage actor before moving back here in 2000. He still acts, mostly in film and television, which allows him more time to write. His most recent play, Bea's Niece, is also being produced all over, but so far not in Montreal.

While his Grade 2 teacher's prediction has come true, Gow tells a story that suggests that his own talents as a career counsellor may leave something to be desired. His acting days at Centaur happen to have coincided with the time when a twentysomething Caroline Rhea was working in the office there.

"Caroline once invited me and a friend to dinner at her place. Knowing that I had done some stand-up early in my career, she asked my advice on becoming a comic." Gow offered sensible counsel: Go down to the Comedy Nest and take a workshop. You'll learn how to string jokes together until you have a short set. Keep at it and one day you could become a headliner.

"Caroline just looked at me," Gow recalls, "and then she said, ‘Not like that, David. I want to go to America and become a successful stand-up who makes money and gets on television.'" Gow assured her that if she couldn't bring herself to perform at the Comedy Nest, she was never going to make it in the States.

The other friend who was at that dinner has never let him forget it.

Cherry Docs, Nov. 6–23 at Geordie Space,
Tue–Sat 8pm, matinée Sat 2pm, $15–$20

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