The Harps of God

Ian C. Nelson, Librarian Emeritus, former Assistant Director of
Libraries (University of Saskatchewan) and dramaturge (Festival de la
Dramaturgie des Prairies).

The 1914 Newfoundland sealing disaster occurred when commercial greed
and the want of a Marconi wireless set and operator (costing $5.00) left
132 men abandoned on the ice for two days and nights, lost and perishing
in a polar storm. Few survived. Out of this came two commissions of
inquiry and now, this epic play, winner of the 2001 Governor General’s
Award for drama.

Disaster survival plays capture the imagination because they delve into
human nature and the spirit required to face impossible odds.
Stetson’s play presents these particulars in heart-wrenching variety.
The why of the tragedy is touched on from many angles—commercial
greed, blind or ignorant authority, negligence, and incompetence. From
the outset Stetson portrays the seal hunt in both its grisly reality and
its economic necessity for historic Newfoundland, but he also includes
an initially ambiguous character who has no heart for the killing, a
brilliant move that basically allows people of all ecological and
political stripes on this contentious issue to enter the play’s lyric
reality and pay attention to the essential theme: the nature of human
survival. At several junctures he likewise makes bold symbolic moment of
certain sealers’ survival, weathering the storm by cuddling up to seal
pups for warmth or deriving sustenance from their freshly killed bodies.

In David Mamet’s words, “dramatic wr iting… is poetry.” Here
the dramatic poetry is inseparable from Stetson’s beautifully rendered
Newfoundland dialect. His characters’ souls take flight spinning
colourful yarns even with their last breath in the crisis. Nor is he
afraid to allow the dead to speak in a surreal third act.

Father–son conflicts, religious differences, bravery, fear, love, and
jealousy all contribute to the many moments of truth in this drama. And
to survive, a man “just needs a sense of purpose ... /it don’t seem
to matter what that purpose is.”

Rising Tide Theatre’s outdoor premiere of The Harps of God took place
at Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, in the ruined foundations of a whaling
factory, 60 miles from the actual disaster site.