Spur with Michael Healey

Spur Festival–Kristin’s 2 Cents

Spur with Michael Healey

About a week ago, MCT attended a new festival, SPUR, which investigates the relationship between art and politics. A group of us went to see the Theatre and Politics Conference with Canadian playwrights Hannah Moscovitch, Guillermo Verdecchia and Michael Healey.

Hannah Moscovitch discussed her process of developing a script derived from sensitive issues and the untold stories of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. What intrigued me about her discussion of This is War was her process of collecting these raw stories of our Canadian Soldiers and creating a fictional play. I am curious about how one can honor those stories? How works like This is War become important depictions of our political history and yet intentionally they are not accurate historical facts? On the other hand I understand the desire to steer away from creating verbatim theatre with all of the legal nightmares. What do you think about works of fiction inspired by real events? Aren’t all stories subjective?

Such interesting new seeds have been planted in my mind, thank you SPUR for a great conference I look forward to next year’s festival!

To find out more about the festival which will be in Winnipeg this weekend, check out the website: spurfestival.ca.

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