1939

AN INSPIRING JOURNEY FROM PAGE TO STAGE

Anticipating a visit by King George VI, an English teacher at a fictional Residential School in Northern Ontario enlists her students in a production of All’s Well That Ends Well. But her rigid ideas of how Shakespeare should be performed are challenged as her Indigenous students start finding parallels between themselves and the characters in the play – and, far from letting themselves be defined by colonial expectations, set out to make Shakespeare’s bitter-sweet comedy defiantly their own.

A space for reflection will be available adjacent to the Studio Theatre following performances of 1939. This space will feature artist Tom Wilson’s Fading Memories of Home, an installation selected by the playwrights that explores the systemic erasure of Indigenous culture in residential schools. Tom Wilson is a musician, visual artist and writer of novels and non-fiction. At the age of fifty-three, it was revealed to him that he was adopted, and his parents were actually Kahnawake Mohawks. Moreover, the woman he’d been raised to believe was his aunt was his mother. Since then, Wilson has explored what his white upbringing means against the juxtaposition of his family and culture. Wilson’s art installation will be on view in the reflection space, which is facilitated by Kelly Fran Davis.
All are welcome.

For each ticket sold to 1939, $5 will be donated jointly to the Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association and the Atlohsa Family Healing Centre.

House Program: 1939

Runtime: Two hours and 28 minutes, including one 20-minute interval