Discover how Canada got the eight-hour workday! Visit the first town to vote on Big Oil! The Ballad of Ginger Goodwin recreates the events surrounding the mysterious death of Albert “Ginger” Goodwin, who led a strike at a Canadian zinc smelter in Trail, BC, that brought the WW I British war machine to a halt. In Kitimat, residents of an industry town in the glorious BC wilderness struggle to decide between economic prosperity and environmental protection when they must vote yes or no to a proposed oil pipeline.

The Ballad of Ginger Goodwin: Cast of 2 women and 3 men

Kitimat: Flexible casting, between 6 and 16 actors of different genders

Elaine Ávila’s plays are produced in Central America, Europe, the U.S., Canada, and Australia. Her Best New Play Awards include: Jane Austen, Action Figure (Festival de los Cocos, Panamá City), Lieutenant Nun (Victoria Critics Circle), and Café a Brasileira (Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon). Her most recent play, Fado, won the award for Favourite Musical in Victoria, BC.Ávila has served as the playwright-in-residence at Pomona College in Los Angeles, Quest University Canada, and Western Washington University; as the Endowed Chair and Head of the M.F.A. Program in Dramatic Writing at the University of New Mexico; and founder of the LEAP Playwriting Program at the Arts Club Theater in Vancouver.She has taught in universities from Portugal to Tasmania, China to Panamá, and is the co-founder of the International Climate Change Theatre Action, involving fifty playwrights, two hundred venues, and twelve thousand audience members worldwide.As the 2019 Fulbright Scholar at the University of the Azores, Ávila lives in New Westminster, British Columbia, with her musician-teacher husband and her sixteen-year-old, a core leader of Sustainabiliteens.

Elaine Ávila's profile page

On Kitimat: “It’s a story as familiar to people in the US as in Canada – a large corporation comes to a town where they want to develop or deliver resources and they promise work and money, a boom, if the citizens will let the corporation have its way.”
—National Observer

On The Ballad of Ginger Goodwin: “It’s been nearly a century since Albert ‘Ginger’ Goodwin was shot and killed in the Cumberland bush on Canada’s Vancouver Island, but thanks to people such as playwright Elaine Avila, the legacy of the workers’ rights activist won’t soon be forgotten.”
–Cascadia Weekly

"Ávila mixes dialogue and song to convey that emotion as she moulds history to culture to politics, giving readers a welcome new perspective on BC community life..." – British Columbia Review