Staging the North-South meridian: spatial and ontological explorations of the Northern experience in two Canadian dramas

Title: Staging the North-South meridian: spatial and ontological explorations of the Northern experience in two Canadian dramas
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2017, vol. 43, iss. 1, pp. [143]-156
Extent
[143]-156
  • ISSN
    0524-6881 (print)
    1805-0867 (online)
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
 

Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.

Abstract(s)
Wendy Lill's 1986 monodrama The Occupation of Heather Rose employs the image of nurse and nursing, generally rich in positive associations, to make an unquestionably political statement about "whites in the wrong places," and about the imposition of the mainstream society's health care rhetoric upon the culturally distant and gravely maltreated northern communities in Canada. The play reveals not only the failure of the federal scheme as inappropriate and culturally insensitive, but also exposes its operation as one of the means of maintaining and structuring the persistent colonial legacy of which the character of the play, as well as the mainstream society, is both witness and victim. Minnie Aodla Freeman's earlier, 1971 play Survival in the South offers a directionally opposed perspective on the Northern experience: the first drama ever written by an Inuk is an authentic attempt to come to aesthetic, as well as emotional terms with the experience of the author's journey of (self)discovery of the Canadian south, and to contribute to establishing an independent contemporary Inuit literary culture which would help defend the ethnic and cultural standing of the Northern people. The article analyzes and compares the two women authors' dramatic journeys to/from the North in the larger context of the discourse of the North in Canada, with the aim to represent the Canadian North as experienced by the country's people on both sides of the geographical and cultural, perhaps self-constructed divide.
References
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[2] Barbee, Evelyn L (1993) 'Racism in U.S. nursing'. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 7(4), 346–362.

[3] Carnegie, Mary E.L. and Estelle M.R. Osborne (1985) 'Integration in professional nursing'. In: Hine, Darlene Clark (ed.) Black Women in the Nursing Profession: A Documentary History. New York: Garland Publishing, 145–148.

[4] Cowan, Cindy (1992) 'The trap of cultural specificity: Seeking intercultural solidarity'. Canadian Theatre Review 73, 24–28.

[5] Filewod, Alan (1992) 'Averting the colonizing gaze: Notes on watching native theater'. In: Brask, Per (ed.) Aboriginal Voices: Amerindian, Inuit and Sami Theater. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 17–28.

[6] Freeman, Minnie Aodla (1982) Survival in the South. In: Gedalof Robin (ed.) Paper Stays Put. A Collection of Inuit Writing. Washington: University of Washington Press, 101–112.

[7] Gedalof, Robin (ed.) (1982) Paper Stays Put. A Collection of Inuit Writing. Washington: University of Washington Press.

[8] Grace, Sherrill, Eve d'Aeth and Lisa Chalykoff (eds.) (1999) Staging the North. Canadian Plays. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press.

[9] Grace, Sherrill (2001) Canada and the Idea of North. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press.

[10] Lill, Wendy (1999) The Occupation of Heather Rose. In: Grace, Sherrill, Eve d'Aeth and Lisa Chalykoff, (eds.) Staging the North. Twelve Canadian Plays. Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 298–330.

[11] Petropoulos, Jacqueline (2003) 'Language and racism: Wendy Lill's The Occupation of Heather Rose'. Canadian Theatre Review 114, 38–41.

[12] Sartorio, Natalia de Araujo and Elma Lourdes Campos Pavone Zoboli (2010) 'Images of a "good nurse" presented by teaching staff'. Nursing Ethics 17(6), 687–694.

[13] Wyonarski, Blair (2011) 'The occupation of Heather Rose an emotional roller coaster with a generous dose of reality'. http://www.thesheaf.com/2011/02/10/the-occupation-of-heather-rose-anemotional-roller-coaster-with-a-generous-dose-of-reality/, accessed on August 14th, 2016.