That's the launch point for The Ministry of Grace, Beagan's version of old-fashioned western drama. The only rub, Brother Cain explains, is that he is going to change her name from Mary to Grace, because Mary is "too Catholic" for his brand of firebrand, speaking-in-tongues, hellfire-and-brimstone preaching. That's when Brother Cain discovers that Mary can read the Bible, and it dawns upon him that she might be a novelty act for his travelling preacher circus, so he offers her a job and a chance to earn enough to make it back home to Canada. She's trying to get her wages from an abusive boss who won't pay up because she wouldn't let him sexually assault her. Mary's first response to Brother Cain is to threaten to whack him with a shovel.Īfter all, she's an Indigenous mom of two young kids who have been taken from her and sent off to school by the Canadian government. Instead, preachers are itinerant travelling road warriors who travel from dusty field to dusty field, throwing up a tent and shepherding in the under-educated, emotionally-damaged, searching-for-a-saviour American masses to sell a little salvation for their tainted souls.
However, it's 1950, somewhere in the western U.S., and televangelicalism hasn't been invented yet (that word may not have been invented yet). When we first meet Mary (an extraordinary Quelemia Sparrow), a Ntlaka'pamux woman from B.C., she gets surprised by a preacher named Brother Cain (Stafford Perry, in the performance of a lifetime), in the opening scene of Calgary playwright Tara Beagan's moving drama The Ministry of Grace.īrother Cain is all teeth and tweed, and practically sweating that unique brand of charisma that can only be described as televangelical.
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