Celebrating Canada’s Linguistic Duality: the Théâtre l’Escaouette’s Winslow

As Canada’s public arts funder, the Canada Council for the Arts is committed to enhancing the standing of both official languages in the arts sector, in alignment with the spirit of the Official Languages Act, whose 50th anniversary is being celebrated in 2019. In light of these celebrations, the Council is drawing attention to some of the projects it has supported that exemplify Canada’s bilingual identity.

A pillar of Acadian theatre

The Théâtre l’Escaouette was founded in Moncton in 1978 with a view to disseminating the realities of Acadian life and culture through the creation of original plays. In addition to putting on several plays every year, l’Escaouette has also created a foundation whose aim is to call on more Acadian artists, thereby enabling the theatre company to present larger scale productions, offer mentoring programs and more artist residencies and continue providing training to new and established playwrights. Throughout its history, the company has earned many notable distinctions.

Telling an original story

Winslow is a compelling story, drawing on extensive research into the life and journals of Colonel John Winslow, the British delegate charged with deporting the Acadians from their homeland. Winslow features a large cast of Acadian and Mi’kmaq performers, on-stage musicians, contemporary marionettes depicting historical characters and multimedia projections with a camera shooting live footage. The play offers a refreshing interpretation “[f]ar from a lament on the 1755 events,” venturing off the beaten path to revisit history with a modern twist and with subtitles in both French and English, with Indigenous-language passages. The Canada Council is indeed honoured to have contributed to this endeavour by providing support through its New Chapter program.

Embodying Canada’s dual linguistic identity

In New Brunswick, Canada’s only province with official bilingual status, one might say that putting on a play in which both official languages are used to communicate with the audience is an obvious choice. But the production crafted by l’Escaouette achieves much more­. It revisits a sensitive topic—the events that led to a shift from a French-speaking territory to a predominantly English-speaking one—using both languages, choosing to move away from the expected colonizer-victim relationship to give the story a new perspective in a spirit of rapprochement. With eight sold-out performances in April 2019, one might be tempted to ask, “What language barrier?” Winslow has been a tremendous success with both Francophone and Anglophone audiences.