Drama

English-language plays published in Canada in 2012 are by playwrights living in many regions of the country, which is not always the case. In some years, the majority of the plays in English that are published have been produced in Toronto. The plays published in 2012 provide a striking sense of the diversity of the country, its people, and their preoccupations. Many of the plays explore ideas relating to a just, fair society. These include a cluster of plays – Gordon Winter, Relative Good, Bolsheviki, The Romeo Initiative, and Seeds – each of which addresses a historical event. There are plays that deal with social issues, such as Penny Plain and Brothel #9, the former a vision of dystopia and the latter about the trafficking of women in India. The Lonely Diner, Pearl Gidley, and The Book of Esther all premiered at the Blyth Festival, located in the rural community of Blyth in Huron County, Ontario. Plays produced by the festival focus on aspects of life that resonate for the immediate community. The plays tend to be realistic in their theatrical style. Often the plot is driven by the values and assumptions of characters being challenged, which leads to tension that is resolved as characters come to respect each other, even if they don’t entirely agree with each other. There is an underlying call in these plays for tolerance as the basis of a viable community. Other plays deal with alienation and disenfranchisement, including Kilt Pins and Night, which depict the alienation of adolescents. Some of the scripts explore new Canadians navigating the challenges of becoming meaningfully integrated into a new culture, which occurs in the context of reconciling life in a new land with traditions they left. These include A Brimful of Asha, Falling in Time, and My Italian Wife.

The purpose of this opening summary is to signal the social engagement of many of the English-language plays published in 2012. The plays have a loose but pervasive theme of community for which theatre may be uniquely suited. Theatre is a collaborative venture. Scripts are meant to be produced, the words penned by a playwright and translated into the languages of theatre by practitioners whose work is presented to an audience. As such, theatre offers artists a medium for exploring issues of community in its various forms. Theatre is always about relationships, even when, as is the case with the plays in the anthology One for the Road, the work is for a solo performer. Each of the plays in that anthology features a character who charts relationships from his or her perspective. The power of theatre is that in performance, the work is presented within a context of collectivity: practitioners presenting to an audience. This fundamental characteristic of theatre allows for an exploration of social issues, providing members of the audience a forum to consider what it means to be a member of community.

Gordon Winter is by Kenneth T. Williams, who is Cree and currently lives in Saskatoon. The play was first produced in 2010 at Persephone Theatre, a regional theatre in Saskatoon, and then remounted in May 2011 at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa as part of Prairie Scene, a festival celebrating the culture of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Williams presents his title character as an old Aboriginal man who is embroiled in a criminal trial in which he is accused of inciting hatred as a result of his vicious comments denigrating Jewish people and immigrants. Williams apparently models Gordon Winter on David Ahenakew, the former chief of the Assembly of First Nations, who in 2002 gave a speech in which, during the question-and-answer period, he made derogatory comments about Jews and immigrants, leading to his being charged in 2003 with inciting hatred. A mistrial was declared on the basis that the judge had not taken into account that there was no evidence that Ahenakew had deliberately incited hatred. There was a retrial, which cleared Ahanakew, upholding the earlier perspective that while the remarks were vile, there was no evidence that their utterance was an attempt to incite hatred.

Williams sticks closely to...