Lost treasures

There’s something tremendously exciting about discovering a ‘lost’ play. I was at The Shaw Festival last week and got a chance to see their excellent production of Githa Sowerby’s The Stepmother.

Hearing the voice of a woman playwright from 1924 writing about her own time was like finding a jewel from an forgotten civilization: it was both a signifier from the past and something of inestimable value today.

The reason I was in Niagara-on-the-Lake was very much connected to the idea of finding buried treasures. Last November, Cahoots was at The Shaw for a two week Playwriting Retreat. It was back then that Cahoots first pitched the idea of working together with The Shaw to expand their canon to include works from Asia, Africa, and South America that were written during Shaw’s lifetime.

Jackie Maxwell, the festival’s artistic director, responded very enthusiastically to the proposal. It’s clear from works like The Stepmother that she is very much committed to expanding people’s idea of what is the festival is all about.

Esther Jun and I sourced a number of fascinating plays for Jackie and company dramaturg Joanna Falck to consider for a modern adaptation. It was a treat to read through some unknown gems like Rabindranath Tagore’s The Post Office, Lao She’s Teahouse, and the major works of Chinese dramatist Cao Yu. (His 1937 play Wilderness is reminiscent of the epic vision of some of O’Neill’s masterpieces.) Translations tend to age poorly so some of these works are ripe for a talented playwright to re-adapt.

Last week, Joanna, Jackie and I discussed some of these works and we’re continuing to move ahead with a very exciting collaboration – one that will introduce new voices and new faces into a much-beloved institution.

I’m excited not only by the possible opportunities for diverse artists but also by the way this collaboration will bring new vitality to an important era in theatre history. So many of the themes of early twentieth century drama still resonate with us now in this new century: the rise and fall of empires, the role of the individual in society, the insatiable appetite of commerce.

And yet, virtually all of the voices we’ve heard from this era have been male and Eurocentric. What has been missing in this discussion are the perspectives from “the rest of the world”. Not surprisingly, in rediscovering some of these voices from the past we can draw remarkable parallels to the present. Then, as now, the story of the emerging world is incomplete without hearing all its voices.