About the Play:

HARD TO FIND BOOK, only a very limited number of copies are still available.

Colonial Tongues is a full-length drama by Mansel Robinson. A young man returns to his home town in Northern Ontario to find it a ghost town. Colonial Tongues makes a passionate plea for understanding Canada and the Canadian identity before it's too late.

Colonial Tongues is about a northern Ontario town that disappears and a character who returns 30 years later. Filled with dark humour, it deals with small towns and the loss of identity. In a small Northern Ontario town in 1967, Edna Barnett finds her family in moral jeopardy. At a kitchen table in this ghost town, 100 miles from nowhere, they are forced to examine questions of community and family; of those who fight and those who can't wait to leave; of resistance and regret; of the spirit of a place ... and the meaning of home.

Colonial Tongues is the playwright's first play. It was written for his Master's Thesis at Concordia Universary in Montreal. Mansel Robinson explained that: "I was on a train, heading back to Northern Ontario for a visit. About an hour from home, I looked out the window expecting to see the small lumber town of Kormak. But the town was gone, bulldozed under. I'd played hockey there, had friends who grew up there. Now, thanks to a simple business decision, the town was gone. Years later, at a kitchen table in a ghost town, the Barnetts ask the questions I had started to ask on that train ride: about community and family; about those who fight to stay and those who can't wait to leave; about resistance and regret; about home."

Colonial Tongues premiered in 1993 at 25th Street Theatre in Saskatoon, and was subsequently produced at Great Canadian Theatre Company (GCTC) in Ottawa and Occasional Arts in Thunder Bay.

Cast: 2 female, 3 male

What people say:

"Lending great poignancy to this work is Robinson's recognition of the fact that what makes such communities so distinctively Canadian is also what puts them at risk." — Canadian Book Review Annual

"... a highly original, literate and emotional portrayal ... remarkable writing ...." — Saskatoon Star Phoenix

"... seethes with rage ... the script's greatest strength is the way Robinson personalizes issues such as economic change and war ...." — NeWest Review

"... a loving lament ...." — Theatrum Magazine

About the Playwright:

Mansel Robinson is a Canadian playwright and fiction writer. He has written numerous plays which have been produced in Ottawa, Montreal, Kitchener, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Regina, and Calgary. Robinson has been writer in residence at the Berton House in Dawson City, the University of Windsor, Regina Public Library, and the Surrey Public Library. He has also worked in a lumber mill, fought fires, ran a blast furnace, worked the rails, and done a lot of backstage work at theatres. A twenty-year resident of Saskatchewan, he now lives in a small cabin down-river from his hometown of Chapleau, in Northern Ontario.