Please join the film screening of 1939, written by Jani Lauzon and Kaitlyn Riordan, directed by Jani Lauzon. The 2022 Stratford Festival production of 1939 launched a partnership between the University of Waterloo’s Office of Indigenous Relations, Waterloo Indigenous Student Centre, Centre of Teaching Excellence, Faculty of Arts, and the Stratford Festival’s Education Department.
About the play/film
At a residential school in northern Ontario, five students are ordered to gather in a classroom. Two of them, Joseph Summers and his sister, Beth, have been at the school for seven years, but its policy of separating siblings has largely kept them apart - till now. Susan Blackbird, an orphan who has been there since she was four, struggles to connect with her barely remembered Cree heritage, while newcomer Evelyne Rice tries to avoid punishment by repressing her Mohawk culture and language. Jean Delorme, as a Métis student, is a rarity at the school and struggles to fit in.
English teacher Sian Ap Dafydd explains the reason for their summons: they have been chosen to entertain King George VI and his Queen on their forthcoming visit with a student performance of Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well. Firmly colonial in her notions and intentions, Ap Dafydd is as determined to get her young actors to deliver the "big round vowels" she considers essential to speaking Shakespeare as she is to show the royal couple how the students are learning to be "good little Canadians."
But as rehearsals proceed, the students' agency erupts as they learn about each other and discover parallels between the play's characters and their own experiences. Confronting individual and collective tragedy with humour and strength, the students undertake a journey of self-discovery and empowerment - their resilience evoking Helena's line in All's Well: "Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie."
Study Guide and Reflection Workshop
Now entering year three, this partnership with the Festival is a collaboration for the development and design of educational resources to support knowledge sharing among communities and institutions, including a 1939 Study Guide. The pilot project, supporting Indigenous theatre production as an education resource, continues with the film screening of the play 1939. A reflection workshop led by Jessica Rumboldt, Centre for Teaching Excellence Education Developer, Indigenous Knowledges will follow the film screening.
This is a free event and everyone is welcome.
Photo credit: David Hou for Stratford Festival's 1939. From left: Tara Sky as Beth Summers, John Wamsley as Jean Delorme, Kathleen MacLean as Susan Blackbird, Wahsontí:io Kirby as Evelyne Rice, and (centre) Richard Comeau as Joseph Summers.
Filmed productions (including Women of the Fur Trade, by Frances Koncan) will be available on Stratfest@Home and upcoming UWaterloo screenings. For more information contact Dr. Sorouja Moll: smoll@uwaterloo.ca