Theatre is Territory

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?