About the Play:

Angélique is a full-length drama by Lorena Gale. Based on true events chronicling the life of Marie-Joseph Angélique; an enslaved Black woman who was publicly executed for allegedly starting a fire that burned Montréal in 1734. The play weaves seamlessly between historical and contemporary times, speaking to us through the flames with an urgent message from the past to our own time.

Angélique is based on the true story of the slave Marie-Joseph Angélique, who was accused of burning down the city of Old Montreal in 1734, and was tortured and hung for the alleged crime. "And in seventeen thirty-four a Negro slave set fire to the City of Montréal and was hanged..." With this bald statement of history as a basis, Lorena Gale constructs a vivid portrait of a time when captive people had no say in the outcome of their lives. Angélique was sold and traded from master to master, yet her hope remained that she would one day taste freedom once again. In the summer of 1730, at the age of 20, Angélique arrived in the city of Montréal where the embers of hope, love, and the sensation of freedom were within her grasp. Those hopes, however, were met with the harsh reality of life as a Black slave in Nouvelle France. Few have spoken to the injustice that stoked the inextinguishable fire in her belly. No one can know for certain if she was responsible for the cinder and wreckage; the charred relics of a people's pain. As Québecers and Canadians, we rarely speak of the real and forgotten story of Angélique and her lasting impact on our social and political landscape. This begs an important question: how much has the state's relationship to Black lives changed since it executed Angélique in the 18th century for a crime it had no proof she committed?

Her first play, Angélique was the winner of the 1995 duMaurier National Playwriting Competition in Canada. It premiered in 1998 at Alberta Theatre Projects in Calgary and was nominated Outstanding New Play in Calgary's Betty Mitchell Awards. Its American premiere was in 1999 at the Repertory Theatre in Detroit, and in New York, Off Broadway at Manhattan Class Company Theatre, where it was nominated for 8 Audelco (Harlem Black Theatre) Awards. Revived by Montréal's Black Theatre Workshop in 2017, it continues an important discussion on the nature of being black and mixed race and belonging in Canada.

Cast: 3 female, 4 male

What people say:

"Gale has fashioned a spare but powerful tale that thrusts the indignities of slavery and the stupidity of racism out of the murky 18th century and into the here and now." — Calgary Herald

"...a dynamic and emotionally powerful theatrical experience." — Time Out New York

About the Playwright:

Lorena Gale (1958 to 2009) was an award winning Canadian actress, playwright, director, and Black community activist. She appeared in over 50 stage productions across Canada, and over 132 roles in film and TV. A third-generation Canadian born in Montréal and raised in Outremont, she was the first Black woman to be accepted to the National Theatre School of Canada. In 1988 she moved to Vancouver and quickly became a mainstay of the TV and film industry, appearing in multiple episodes of The X-Files, The Outer Limits, Smallville, and Battlestar Galactica, in features like The Butterfly Effect, The Chronicles of Riddick, and Things We Lost in the Fire, and in dozens of TV movies. The Union of BC Performers established the Lorena Gale Woman of Distinction Award in 2009 citing "her enduring commitment to power, dignity, intelligence and truth."