“There is a hole in the middle of my hometown” begins the play about the beginning of the end of the Wilson’s meat packing plant that dominated the economy and the geography of Albert Lea throughout most of the 20th century.

Written by Albert Lea native Eva Barr and based on the memoir “Packinghouse Daughter” by Cheri Register, the play, “Wilson’s Girl” is in development under the auspices of the Minnesota History Theater. It was part of the Raw Stages New Works Festival that ran Jan. 16 through Jan. 19. Barr’s script backs into the story of the 1959 strike/lockout from the point of view of the daughter of one of the strikers, Cheri Register. Along with the character of a young Cheri, it features her father, former County Commissioner and Wilson employee and union leader Gordy Register, her mother, Ardis, and the Rev. Lloyd Peterson as the main characters.

Employing the close friendship between Cheri Register and her best friend, Linda Melting, the daughter of one of the managers at Wilson’s, to show the tensions among friends and neighbors, the playwright expands the list of players in the drama of the strike and the imposition of martial law by then Gov. Orville Freeman. She is careful to include the name of Mabel Goodvangen, who “worked in bacon” and kept a scrapbook of the strike.

The Rev. Lloyd Peterson, then pastor of the largest Presbyterian Church in Albert Lea, (and the script notes, probably serving mostly Republicans) is played as a man who feels it is his civic and Christian duty to try to serve as a go-between, trying to bring the two sides together.

The hole described in the opening could well be a hole in the heart of the city, which never quite regained it’s earlier economic strength — a symbol of what has been happening in much of rural and small-town America. The plant was ultimately destroyed by a fire in 2001, though that’s not part of this production.

Having made it into Raw Stages, “Wilson’s Girl” is likely to appear for a full run in a future history theater season.

Lois Duffy

Afton