About the Play:

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

Winner 1983 Governor General's Award for Drama (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize) and the Chalmers Award

Quiet in the Land is a full-length drama by Anne Chislett. This eloquent play, by one of Canada's most respected writers, deals with the tension and dispute which beset a rural Amish Community in Ontario when one of their young men defies his elders and goes off to fight in World War I. Especially recommended for school and contest use.

Quiet in the Land is centered on Jacob (Yock) Bauman, a young member of an Amish community near Kitchener, Ontario. He chafes at the strict (and, he believes, outmoded) beliefs of his elders, particularly those of his father, Christy. World War I is raging in Europe, and most of Canada's young men have gone off to fight with the British forces, but the Amish, because of their pacifist convictions, have refused to join the war effort. By deciding to enlist, Yock alienates himself not only from family and community, but also from the lovely Katie Brubacher, with whom he has fallen in love. When Yock returns from the war Katie has wed someone else and, ironically, the very acts of bravery which have made him a hero to the rest of Canada have made Yock a bloody-handed villain to his own people. Although the compassionate Katie offers to leave her husband and go off with him, Yock accepts his status as an outcast and departs alone, but not before admitting that, while standing over the body of a slain German soldier, the meaning of pacifism was, at last, powerfully revealed to him. In the end, Yock's stern father (now a bishop) is vindicated – but at the loss of the one he sought to save, his beloved and only son! Despite having no happy endings, Quiet in the Land is a thoroughly satisfying and lovingly written Canadian classic.

Quiet in the Land premiered in 1981 at the Blyth Festival Theatre (one of Canada's most widely-praised producers of new plays), won both the Governor General's Award for Drama and the Chalmers Canadian Play Award in 1983. Since then the play has been produced widely at professional and community theatres, including Off-Broadway in 1986 by New York's famed Circle Repertory Company, and is regularly performed in high school and college theatre productions as a showcase of student talent.

Cast: 7 female, 8 male, extras

What people say:

"This gentle, thoughtful, drama asks whether morality and religious belief can stand above the law of the land." — Christian Science Monitor

"The theme isn't so distant from today's anxieties: the reaction of a pacifist community to a war threatening to engulf it." — Variety

"…an honest and effectively human play, written well, with an understated passion…." — Edmonton Sun

About the Playwright:

Anne Chislett is a Canadian playwright, who was born in St. John's, Newfoundland, and raised there. She was educated at Memorial University, St. John's and the University of British Columbia and taught English in Ontario high schools before becoming a full time playwright in 1980. Her plays have been produced throughout Canada, the United States, and Japan. She co-founded the Blyth Festival, a theatre festival dedicated to new works by Canadian playwrights, in 1975. From 1998 to 2002 she was Artistic Director of the Festival.