Event

Mad Ship

Mad Ship is the story of Tomas Sorensen, a Scandinavian immigrant to the Canadian prairies in the 1920s. He is a man of great passion and great integrity, who dreams of creating a family wheat dynasty in this new land of opportunity. He is also a man who is deeply in love with his beautiful wife, Solveig, and together they have a profound bond that sustains them. But prairie drought and the Great Depression conspire against them, and the family is brought to ruin when their crops are destroyed by a massive dust storm. Facing foreclosure at the bank, Solveig suggests that they return to their homeland. But Tomas refuses to give up in Canada, too proud to return as a failure. He leaves Solveig and their two young children in search of work in a distant city, setting off a series of events that soon turn tragic. Tomas returns home after several months to find Solveig dead and the children alone in the house and terrified. He goes mad with grief, and grows obsessed with the idea of returning Solveigʼs body to their homeland. He embarks on a Quixotic mission to build a sailboat and sail out of the prairie dust bowl along a network of rivers leading to Hudson Bay and the ocean beyond. Once the sailboat is complete, he straps the harness over his shoulders and begins to drag the boat through the burnt-out landscape to the distant river. Tomas stubbornly continues on, dragging the sailboat through the sand dunes, convinced that his salvation lies in the act of returning Solveigʼs body to their homeland. Ultimately, Tomas is pulled back from the brink of certain death by the love and hope offered by his two young children. Mad Ship is a sweeping story cenetred on an epic love affair between a husband and wife. It is also a story about the burden of dreams a prairie dust bowl Fitzcarraldo. Inspired by a true story.