Write On!: Theatre Saskatchewan Anthology

David E. Kemp is professor emeritus of drama at Queen’s University.

The five plays in this volume were chosen by a committee to recognize
and, more importantly, promote Saskatchewan talent during the year in
which the province was celebrating its centenary. The chosen scripts are
a mixed bag in terms of their themes and respective production
histories, but all are challenging and entertaining.

Set in a ranch house in southeastern Saskatchewan, Rodeo Life by Sharon
Butala is a poignant and riveting play about memory and imagination, and
about the capacity of the past to influence the future. Mary Love’s
Prairie Tomten, which explores bullying and the problems faced by a
young girl who does not conform to the supposed teen ideal, makes an
impassioned plea for the acceptance of difference. In Dennis Hunt’s
Choices, the themes of ambition, betrayal, selfishness, forgiveness, and
love are explored as a young girl investigates the connection between
the death of an unknown young man and some papers left by her father who
has just died.

The collection’s most allegorical play, The Scarborough Four by B.D.
Miller, tells how four Scarborough squeegee kids who are arrested for
horse stealing in a Saskatchewan town lead the local teenagers in a
rebellion of sorts.

Finally, The Armoured Heart by Ian C. Nelson is set in a dungeon in
Rouen on the day Joan of Arc is burned at the stake. Her martyrdom has a
direct impact on the relationship between the two disparate prisoners, a
cunning old woman and an erstwhile church scribe.