About the Play:

Finalist for the 1996 Governor General's Award for Drama (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize)

The Glace Bay Miners' Museum is a full-length drama adapted for stage by Wendy Lill from a short story by Sheldon Currie. The story of the ill-fated romance between a wandering musician-social-idealist and a Cape Breton coal miner's daughter, whose dreams are reawakened by their passion. The Glace Bay Miners' Museum is a play in which the all-consuming brightness of dreams and memory are overshadowed by absentee greed, callousness, and exploitation. It is a tragedy that is hard as nails and completely unsentimental, yet nonetheless full of love and humour.

The Glace Bay Miners' Museum is the now-classic Canadian story about a Cape Breton coal mining family in the 1940s. In Glace Bay, romance blossoms between Neil Currie – a musician and misfit with limited job prospects – and scrappy Margaret MacNeil, a coal miner's daughter. But behind it all, a strike and a mining disaster loom over the community. At once lyrical and tough, poignant and funny, this celebrated stage adaptation of Sheldon Currie's short story digs deep into the issues of the forgotten and exploited, honouring and celebrating the people of Cape Breton.

The Glace Bay Miners' Museum has taken many forms, first published as a short story by Sheldon Currie in the Antigonish Review in 1976, then adapted by Wendy Lill into a radio drama in 1991, and a stage play that premiered in 1995 by Eastern Front Theatre and Ship's Company Theatre in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia. This was followed by the feature film called Margaret's Museum in 1995, and finally, a novel, The Glace Bay Miners' Museum by Sheldon Currie, in 1996. It's been a popular and a favourite play for regional and community theatre productions ever since.

Cast: 2 female, 3 male

What people say:

"…a tender, romantic triumph over the genre…." — Eye Weekly

"…bittersweet magic realism leavened by the ribald banter between the characters." — Halifax Daily News

"… as real as the coal." — Halifax Chronicle Herald

"Part love story, part political tract about black-hearted bosses and businessmen, the show tells the too-familiar tale of a culture and community destroyed by the very thing – in this case, coal mining – that puts bread on the table." — The Ottawa Citizen

About the Playwright:

Wendy Lill is a Canadian playwright and former parliamentarian who worked in various parts of Canada, finally settling in Nova Scotia. Her experiences in journalism and broadcasting influenced and encouraged her to "fictionalize real incidents and events." She has been described as a writer of "contemporary social issues with a clear-cut women's perspective." Her plays are produced in professional and community theatres and universities across Canada and internationally.