About the Play:

Esker Mike & His Wife, Agiluk is a full-length drama by Herschel Hardin. A social satire about a rowdy, devious white trapper in the Mackenzie Delta and his dealings with his Inuit wife and the bureaucrats who try to impose Southern rules on Northern logic. This Canadian classic is a complex and important play.

Esker Mike & His Wife, Agiluk is a tragic reflection on the role of women who are forced to bear children in a society that cannot afford to support them. Esker Mike is a white muskrat trapper in Aklavik whose defiant Inuk girlfriend, Agiluk, refuses to bear more children until he can start trapping enough to feed their whole family. Enraged, he forces her into marriage. The Anglican church gladly obliges, but it's clear Esker Mike would just as easily take his services to the Catholic church. He's an unscrupulous, foolish businessman: with help from his buddy William, he cheats his way into some welfare money by pretending it's for Agiluk's nonexistent cousin, and promptly loses that money in a business deal gone sour. In despair, Agiluk kills and buries two of her children. She is sent away in custody to Edmonton.

Esker Mike & His Wife, Agiluk premiered in 1971 at Factory Lab Theatre in Toronto and was one of the first plays that didn't depict the North as an idyllic, simple place. The large-cast play was successfully staged at several professional theatres across Canada. Generally accepted to be one of the most important and influential Canadian plays, it remains popular with academics and has been performed in college theatre productions as a showcase of student talent.

Cast: 6 female, 9 male

What people say:

"Stark, engrossing tragedy…a drama of inevitability and strength." — Globe and Mail

"A very fine play…the finest play I've seen among the body of Canadian work…fascinating, moving, and ultimately very beautiful." — CBC Radio

"A wealth of richly fashioned dialogue and a splendidly real set of characters…starkly realistic." — Vancouver Sun

"Out of the evening comes compassion…acceptance of timelessness and immutability." — Vancouver Province

"A monumental achievement…a superb play…enormously rich." — Toronto Star

About the Playwright:

Herschel Hardin is a Canadian author, playwright, public-policy consultant, volunteer activist, and commentator. He grew up in a prairie town, Vegreville, Alberta, just east of Edmonton, and began his career as a playwright. One of his plays, Esker Mike and his Wife, Agiluk is a Canadian classic. He has also, over the years, been a radio broadcaster, newspaper columnist, community organizer, book and theatre critic, arts correspondent, public-broadcasting advocate, regulatory analyst, corporate director and, on one memorable occasion, stage actor.