Burning Vision

Description

122 pages
$16.95
ISBN 0-88922-472-2
DDC C812'.6

Publisher

Year

2003

Contributor

Reviewed by David E. Kemp

David E. Kemp, a former professor of drama at Queen’s University, is
the author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

Review

Burning Vision follows the journey of uranium rock, from its origins in
Northern Canada, embedded in Dene territory, through water, over land,
and into fire—the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. In the late
1800s, a Dene Medicine man sang four songs during his vision of a
burning in the sky. Although the vision came true, its victims were not
the Dene but the Japanese.

Moving back and forth and across time, from the personal to the
universal and from realism to symbolism, Burning Vision is a remarkable
play. It blends a wry sense of irony with an impassioned humanism. It
questions the assumptions of public record. It celebrates the power of
oral traditions to express the real truth of private experience. At its
heart, it is a play about the loss of innocence, about how we are all
connected and how we continue to carry the genetic burdens of our
ancestors.

Writer/performer Marie Clements is the artistic director of Urban Ink
Productions and the award-winning author of eight plays, including Age
of Iron, Urban Tattoo, and Now Look What You Made Me Do. Burning Vision
was commissioned by Rumble Theatre in association with Urban Ink,
nominated for six Jessie Awards, and invited to the prestigious Festival
des Ameriques in Montreal and the Magnetic North Festival in Ottawa.

Citation

Clements, Marie., “Burning Vision,” Canadian Book Review Annual Online, accessed October 10, 2024, https://cbra.library.utoronto.ca/items/show/17844.