SYNOPSIS:

Anticipating a visit by King George VI, an English teacher at a fictional Residential School in Northern Ontario enlists her students in a production of All’s Well That Ends Well. But her rigid ideas of how Shakespeare should be performed are challenged as her Indigenous students start finding parallels between themselves and the characters in the play – and, far from letting themselves be defined by colonial expectations, set out to make Shakespeare’s bitter-sweet comedy defiantly their own.

Directed by Jani Lauzon

Featuring Richard Comeau, Wahsonti:io Kirby, Kathleen MacLean, Tara Sky, Jon Wamsley, Sarah Dodd, Jacklyn Francis, Mike Shara

A space for reflection will be available adjacent to the Studio Theatre following performances of 1939. This space will feature artist Tom Wilson’s Fading Memories of Home, an installation selected by the playwrights that explores the systemic erasure of Indigenous culture in residential schools. All are welcome.

For each ticket sold to 1939, $5 will be donated jointly to the Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association and the Atlohsa Family Healing Centre.