About the Play:

Finalist for the 1987 Governor General's Award for Drama (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize)

The Occupation of Heather Rose is a full-length drama by Wendy Lill. The titular character Heather Rose, a young and inexperienced nurse, goes north to a remote Canadian Aboriginal community. Her adventure turns into a painful exploration of her own fragile cultural heart of darkness. A one-woman tour-de-force for a powerful actress, The Occupation of Heather Rose builds in one of the great outburst monologues in Canadian theatre history.

The Occupation of Heather Rose is a classic "stranger in a strange land" story. The play references both Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, books that followed an ill-equipped lone stranger plunging into a surreal and dangerous realm. In accordance with those, and the primary story about Heather Rose striding with false confidence into the desolation of a northern First Nation, prepare the audience for the nightmare of dislocation and alienation this one-woman show evokes. Young, naive, and inadequately trained, urban health care/social worker Heather Rose flirts with the pilot as she wings her way north in a float plane, to land in the isolated and remote Snake Lake Reserve, primed to make a difference. She is met, when she lands, with what she initially perceives as a careless disrespect for anything she has understood to date of culture and civilization. The destitute, alienated Aboriginal people she has been sent to "move forward" meet her bright imperial gaze with the blank stares that arise from relentless years of exploitation and broken promises. Nine months later Heather Rose is "bushed" – utterly disillusioned by the growing horror of her new-found realization that what her culture has to offer this community: the alcohol bootlegged in by the charming bush pilot; the unsuitable clothing sold by the thoughtless proprietor of the general store; the gasoline used as much by the youth of the community to get high as to afford them access to what has become the tractless wilderness they inhabit; she finally understands is less than nothing – total dependency. She returns, compelled, like Marlowe in Heart of Darkness to tell her story to others – like her missing supervisor, whose empty office she "occupies" on her return, illustrating her monologue of despair on a blackboard to an absent colonial authority for which the audience stands in as its silent and complicit witness.

The Occupation of Heather Rose premiered in 1985 at the Prairie Theatre Exchange in Winnipeg. Since then the play enjoyed widespread acceptance among leading regional theatres across Canada.

Cast: 1 female

What people say:

"Playwright Wendy Lill takes you on an incredible intellectual and psychological journey ... this kind of theatrical experience is not to be missed." — Georgia Straight

"An achingly honest reminder of the naively enthusiastic attempts that each of us has made to wade bravely into unfamiliar territory." — Toronto Star

"Heather Rose is a structurally seamless play full of wit, vivid imagery and poignancy." — Halifax Mail Star

"A virtuoso solo showpiece ... an entirely human but deceptively unsentimental play." — Vancouver Province

"Ultimately The Occupation of Heather Rose is a plea for forgiveness and understanding as Heather does battle with the darker part of her nature, that 'heart of darkness' that 'occupies' us all to some degree." — Gabriola Sounder

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.