In last week’s Globe and Mail, national theatre critic J. Kelly Nestruck asks Where’s our war on our stages? – contrasting the relative abundance of Iraq war drama in Toronto against the dearth of Afghanistan-related productions:
“Isn’t it about time Canadian playwrights, directors and actors started grappling with a war their fellow countrymen are actually playing a role in?”
In response, the folks at The Wrecking Ball jumped in with a great Theatre of war post, in which they echo Nestruck’s sentiment and address some of the challenges involved in creating drama around Canada’s military involvement in Afghanistan:
“Are we an occupation force? Are we fighting a nebulous American-led War on Terror? Are we peace-keeping? Nation-building? Are we preventing human rights atrocities? Or are we committing them? What is our mission anyway? And on and on. But of course theatre doesn’t have to answer those questions, it has to pose them. It has to dramatize those questions. It’s hard to do that and to do it well. But that has to be our challenge.”
These are great questions. Does anyone know of any Canadian productions (current or upcoming) that are dealing with our war in Afghanistan?
Well, that cleared the room.
Disappointing, that.
Hi :) I just stumbled on your blog entry from Theatre is Territory.
I’m an emerging Theatre maker in Montreal, and am from the maritimes, which means that I count many military types in my close circles…. I’ve an uncle who is a former Lieutenant Colonel and he’s directed me towards the avenues necessary to get funding to take a show to Kandahar.
In the same way that, as a previous comment suggested, your post cleared the room, audition notices and networking sessions attempting to get people involved in the project have made people run screaming in the opposite direction.
People, even Theatre People, don’t like war. This one, specifically, is so broadly accepted as a bad idea, that the liberal-minded artsy types in my community appear to be prohibitively apprehensive of discussing any other ideas about Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan, beyond the fact that it’s a bad one.
Hi Net Soucy,
This is really interesting. Can you send along more news of your show as it develops. I’d love to hear more . . . send any updates to blog@praxistheatre.com