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Waiting for the Parade
Waiting for the Parade
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Author: John Murrell Publisher: Talonbooks Format: Softcover # of Pages: 101 Pub. Date: 1980 ISBN-10: 0889221839 ISBN-13: 9780889221833 Cast Size: 5 women
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About
the Play:
Winner of the 1980 Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award
Waiting for the Parade is a full-length comedic drama by
John Murrell. The Home Front, World War II, Calgary. Five very
different women band together to deal with a war they didn't start
and want no part of. This charming, funny, and touching drama is one
of Canada's best-loved plays.
Waiting for the Parade is set in Calgary in the 1940s. Five
disparate women band together to work for the Second World War effort
for a conflict they had no part in causing. This Canadian classic
shows the walking wounded are not always at the front. Tragedy and
humour interweave as each of them copes with the impingement of war
on her daily life. As they entertain the troops, they cope with
shortages, politics, each other, and their menfolk – both those who
went overseas and those who stayed behind. They struggle, argue,
sing, drink and dance. And in the process, they come face to face
with themselves. Together, they find a way to survive a defining
moment in Canadian history, when a national identity based on working
together and accepting difference was born. The play developed out of
interviews with actual Calgary women who had managed to live through
the war. Incorporating the lifestyles, prejudices, music and dances
of the '40s, it opens a multi-faceted window onto Canadian society at
the time.
Waiting for the Parade was first performed in 1977 by Alberta
Theatre Projects, at the Canmore Opera House in Heritage Park,
Calgary. The play has
become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and
workshops and has been performed many times in
high school, college, and community theatre productions across
Canada, the US, the UK, and has become a classic repertoire piece in
theatres in the English-speaking world.
Cast: 5 women
What people say:
"You follow these women …
with a rapt empathy seldom elicited in world theater." —
New York Magazine
"Waiting for the Parade
demonstrates the old theatrical law that a play that is local,
detailed and specific often has the capacity to reach out beyond its
immediate environment. Set in Calgary, Alberta, Waiting for
the Parade deals with the way five women coped with the
pressures of World War II. Geographically, the conflict may have been
remote, but it still impinged on individual lives. Waiting
for the Parade is an honest play that captures precisely
the texture of ordinary hopes and despairs." — The
Guardian (London)
"A small masterpiece."
— The Ottawa Citizen
About the Playwright:
John Murrell (1945-2019) is one of Canada's best known international
playwrights. His dramas focus on real people and cultural icons. He
has also written operas, and translated works by anyone from
Sophocles to Chekhov. He has headed the Banff Playwright's Colony and
the Theatre Section of the Canada Council, been Associate Director of
the Stratford Festival and Artistic Director of the Banff Centre for
the Arts, and is a multiple Chalmers Award winner. For his enormous
contributions to the arts in his adopted province and country, the
Texas-born Murrell received the Alberta Order of Excellence and was
appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. His plays have been
translated into 15 languages and produced in more than 35 countries
around the world. |
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Edmond Rostand, Translated by John Murrell
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