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Whereverville

By Josh MacDonald

Dragging Newfoundland “kicking and screaming into the 20th century” (a quote attributed to Joey Smallwood), resettlement was a carrot-and-stick approach to depopulating the province’s fishing outports. Communities were encouraged to abandon themselves in exchange for financial aid and the promise of better services in centralized “growth” towns. Between 1954 and 1975, the Federal and Provincial governments brought about the move of over 300 communities and 30,000 people. First and foremost, Whereverville is a work of fiction and its setting, the imaginary community of Loam Bay, does not appear on any map—tellingly, however, neither do many of the 300 communities by which this play was inspired.

Set in a one-room school house during the decisive evening of the community’s vote on whether to stay or leave, Josh MacDonald’s play is an intriguing reversal of and homage to Bertolt Brecht’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle. While in Brecht’s play, the conclusion of the conflict over a community is that “those best able to take care of the land should posses it,” in Whereverville the conclusion is that “those no longer able to take care of the land should leave it.”

In both plays, it is the heart and mind of a young woman bereft of her future on which the action turns. It is Loam Bay’s schoolteacher, Abby Shea, herself “from away,” who holds the deciding vote as she struggles with her own phantom attachment to the community, its citizens and its ghosts of times past, and it is she who must learn that sometimes, in order to keep what we hold most dear, we must give it away—that “nothing lasts.”

ISBN 13: 9780889225060 | ISBN 10: 889225060
6 W x 9 H inches | 96 pages
$15.95 CAN / $11.95 US
Rights: World
Backlist | Drama | Bisac: DRA013000

QUOTES OF NOTE

“ Whereverville is highly engaging.”

—The Royal National Theatre, Great Britain

“[Whereverville is] emotional, poetic, humourous and character-rich.”

—The Mail Star, Halifax, N.S.

“An intelligent playwright with a love of humanity, MacDonald has a gift…”

—The Chronicle Herald, Halifax, N.S.

“Appearances are deceptive [in Whereverville], no less in the play’s form than in its plotting. A well-crafted and multilayered script.”

—University of Toronto Quarterly

“Josh MacDonald is one of Nova Scotia’s theatrical young Turks… crafting highly compelling theatre that cuts close to the bone.”

—The Globe and Mail

About the Contributors

Josh MacDonald is a writer and actor living in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. His first play, Halo, has toured throughout Canada and is Two Planks’ largest box-office success to date. MacDonald’s latest play, Whereverville, also produced by Two Planks, went on a national tour in the 2004-2005 season. His comedy-drama feature film Faith, Fraud & Minimum Wage will be released in theatres by Seville Pictures/Entertainment One in October 2010.

> Go to biography…