About the Play and Playwright
=0D=0A=“Sisters” is a tough, uncompromising look at a convent-run Native residential school. While the play chronicles in graphic detail the by now well documented agenda of cultural genocide which motivated the establishment of Native residential schools in Canada, the daring triumph of this play is that it reveals the far less well documented cultural infrastructure and values of the society which created those schools—the church and the state of white, colonial, paternalist Canada.
=0D=0A=Playwright and politician Wendy Lill has written extensively for radio, magazines, film, and television. Her work has resulted in two ACTRA awards, a Golden Sheaf award (for her film Ikwo), a Chalmers award, a Gemini award (for “Sisters”), a New York Festivals Radio Program and Promotion Award, and four nominations for the Governor-General’s Literary Award for Drama (The Occupation of Heather Rose, All Fall Down, The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum, and Corker.) Chimera, her first play since leaving politics, premiered at the Tarragon Theatre. She created and was head writer for the award-winning CBC Radio series Backbencher.
=0D=0A=This production
=0D=0A=Director Brent Ronning, first encountered this important work at Theatre BC’s Mainstage provincial drama festival in 2017 in Vernon, BC.
=0D=0A=There is a strong trigger warning especially for residential school survivors and their families.
=0D=0A=The talented cast includes many familiar and talented faces from the Capitol Theatre stage: Teresa Drew, Nicole Saugstad, Andrea Markiewicz, Mitch Coté, and Curtis Dewar, as well as recent arrival to the Alberni Valley Jacqollyne Keath, fresh off of directing our recent production of “Looking”. We are excited that our award winning lighting designer Diena Tyne is developing the very unique look of this production.
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