The Plainsman

Ian C. Nelson is Assistant Director of Libraries, University of
Saskatchewan; and Director, Saskatoon Gateway Plays, Regina Summer
Stage, and La Troupe du Jour.

Gabriel Dumont seems destined—like Louis Riel—to become the subject
of many words, many dramas. Largely by using a device of ritual song,
Ken Mitchell has managed to find a refreshing way to present this latest
creation in The Plainsman. The play premiered in 1985, the 100th
anniversary of Riel’s defeat, at 25th Street Theatre in Saskatoon. It
was given an “environmental” setting by director Tom Bentley-Fisher,
who explains the production values in an introduction to this volume.

The song ritual gives Mitchell’s play a mythic flavor and makes good
the promise that the play is not about “personal distractions,” but
about a whole people. (In a history that is in the midst of revision,
the 1885 uprising is now referred to as the Rebellion/Resistance.) The
songs and the music tell of past tales of the Métis on the prairie and
at the Red River encounters, while at the same time they prepare the
present events and presage the future. Mitchell uses them fully in the
first act, which immediately precedes the events at Batoche, and,
appropriately, leaves them only announced or abortively begun in the
second act, which takes place the day after Louis Riel’s execution.
The very present Riel does not appear on stage; the pivotal character is
Gabriel Dumont’s enigmatic wife Madeleine, about whom little is known.
We are in the wings of received history—much more fertile ground for
the creative imagination of playwright and director.

The volume—part of Coteau Books’ Florence James series—includes a
two-page colloquial autobiography by Mitchell and an explanation by Rita
Shelton Deverell of the role of James in the development of Saskatchewan
theatre: “The results of the opportunities Florence Bean James gave to
us are evident in this series of scripts. It’s a bumper harvest.”