Mrs. Haynes

Elizabeth Sterling Haynes

Elizabeth was a force, a creative energy unleashed at a time when creativity was suspect and at a place where creativity was often ignored in the hope that it would go away....The Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Theatre has never existed as a building....But she often quoted...Roy Mitchell as saying, 'you do not build a theatre with bricks. You build it with people.' Her theatre exists in the people whose lives she touched."
Gwen Pharis Ringwood

'What in God's name am I doing here' I thought. 'I'm only in this bloody course because I can neither draw, nor paint nor sing nor play an instrument. I'm no good with tools, it's hot up here, the bolt won't turn, and who the hell are these creeps in drama, anyway?". . . During a quiet moment, a voice the like of which I had never heard before, floated through the auditorium, rich, resonant and vital . . . .I remember striving to imagine what body, what face could produce such a sound. Purposely I dropped my wrench to the floor and climbed down to retrieve it. I fixed my gaze on the most statuesque figure I had ever seen. It was at that moment that I subconsciously began to reconsider the direction my life would take.

There was nothing in our working...relationship from then until she died that was not a source of inspiration to me. As I write this, Beethoven's Ninth is playing in the background. A happy accident, for the work of Elizabeth Sterling Haynes seems to me, upon reflection, always to have been a "Hymn of Joy."
Tom Peacocke

In the Alberta Golden Jubilee Anthology, Elizabeth Sterling Haynes wrote, “The one thing I’m sorry about is that they always have to go away; Alberta must export her acting talent because, as yet there’s no employment here. Someday, perhaps we will truly build our own theatre. Alberta playwrights will create drama… strong and colourful and moving as the province itself … and Alberta actors will translate it into life, all over Alberta, for thrilled Alberta audiences.” Throughout her career, she began the foundation of quality and structure to Alberta theatre that brings us to this our Centennial year.

In 1922 Elizabeth Sterling Haynes moved to Edmonton from Toronto, a professional move which many may have considered ill-advised at best and laughable at worst. She wasted no time spreading the good word – that very November an article in the University of Alberta’s, The Gateway, reported that at an afternoon tea and general meeting held by the Dramatic Society, “Mrs. Haynes” presented a paper entitled, “The ABC of Dramatic Technique, which was concerned chiefly with the essential, fundamental elements of dramatic production.” She directed and acted in productions both at the University and around the city. In 1929 she co-founded the Alberta Drama League and Edmonton’s Little Theatre.

In 1932, the middle of the Depression, The Department of Extension at the University of Alberta received a three-year grant from the Carnegie Foundation. Haynes was named Director of Drama. As her jurisdiction included the entire province, she set off into the countryside “by train, bus or car, teaching and stimulating knowledge of theatre in rural Alberta.” (Edmonton Journal, Nov. 18, 1955) She taught week long adult courses in drama, gave public lectures, advised amateur dramatic societies, helped to organize and adjudicate festivals, and “for a moment replaced the grim saga of drought, grasshoppers and hard times with visions of something fine and beautiful.” (Barbara Villy Cormack)

In 1933, Dr. E. A. Corbett and Elizabeth Sterling Haynes initiated a summer school for Drama. “I recall their excitement when they decided the school should be held in BanffNational Park,” wrote playwright Gwen Pharis Ringwood. “They hoped for twenty-five students and got over two hundred.” That summer school has since grown into the internationally renowned Banff School of Fine Arts.

In 1949, Studio Theatre was founded at the University of Alberta, and Elizabeth Sterling Haynes directed or acted in many productions there until 1955, training and inspiring student artists.

A Legacy for Edmonton and Alberta