Overview

According to Newfoundland's first premier, Joey Smallwood, the province was dragged ""kicking and screaming into the twentieth century"" by ambitious government resettlement plans to depopulate small fishing outports. Through a kind of carrot-and-stick approach, communities were encouraged to abandon themselves in exchange for financial aid and the promise of better services in centralized ""growth towns."" More than thirty thousand Newfoundlanders relocated under this plan between 1954 and 1975. Set in a one-room schoolhouse during the decisive evening of a community's vote on whether to stay or leave, Whereverville is an intriguing reversal of and homage to Bertolt Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Whereas in Brecht's play the conclusion of the conflict over a community is that ""those best able to take care of the land should possess it,"" in MacDonald's play, it 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.""

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Reviews

Whereverville is highly engaging. -- The Royal National Theatre, London, United Kingdom [Whereverville is] emotional, poetic, humorous and character-rich. -- Halifax Mail Star An intelligent playwright with a love of humanity, MacDonald has a gift... -- Halifax Chronicle Herald 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. -- Globe and Mail

Author Information

Josh MacDonald Josh MacDonald is a writer and actor living in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. His first play, Halo, has toured throughout Canada and is Two Planks and a Passion Theatre Company's 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 was released in theatres by Seville Pictures/Entertainment One in October 2010.

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