Also by Yvette Nolan:
Annie Mae's Movement
The Unplugging © Copyright 2014 by Yvette Nolan
“A Case Of You”
Words and Music by Joni Mitchell
© 1971 (Renewed) Crazy Crow Music
All Rights Reserved
Used by Permission of Alfred Music Publishing Co., Inc.
Playwrights Canada Press
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Cover design by Leah Renihan
Book design by Blake Sproule
The Alegreya serif typeface used was designed by Juan Pablo del Peral. The typefaces is used under the SIL Open font license version 1.1.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Nolan, Yvette
The unplugging [electronic resource] / Yvette Nolan.
A play.
Electronic monograph in multiple formats.
Issued also in print format.
ISBN 978-1-77091-133-8 (PDF).--ISBN 978-1-77091-134-5 (EPUB)
I. Title
PS8577.O426U67 2013 C812'.54 C2012-907940-5
We acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council (OAC)—an agency of the Government of Ontario, which last year funded 1,681 individual artists and 1,125 organizations in 216 communities across Ontario for a total of $52.8 million—the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.
for Kugler who gave me the story
Donna who gave me the deadline
Randy who gave me the reason
and Philip who gave me the space
If Yvette Nolan is a bit of a seer, a fortuneteller, as I suspect she and many writers are, our society is cruising toward an unplugging of our own. Halfway into this play in your hands, the character Bernadette speaks of natural disasters. She claims that she foresaw the eponymous “unplugging,” a term she invents to describe the sudden termination of all the technology in their world: “I used to think of it as the earth waking and shaking like some great dog, and all the machines and wires being shaken off like so many fleas. The earthquakes in Haiti and Japan, the disappearance of the Maldives… But that was really negative. The unplugging is more—benign.” She paints a vivid picture of the chaos that ensued, and, chillingly, admits that despite sensing its arrival, she didn't prepare for the unplugging. This strikes an uneasy chord, articulating that unspoken, creeping feeling of disquiet with our own digital dependence. Just during the rehearsals and premiere run of this play, we saw major earthquakes on the West Coast in the Haida Gwaii region, and Hurricane Sandy in the Caribbean and along the US East Coast, forcing closed the New York Stock Exchange, flooding the subway system, and plunging Manhattan into the dark, unplugging millions.
Yvette is an astute observer of the everyday and of the larger global movements that form and inform our lives and politics. The Unplugging speaks to both ends of that spectrum, the small, domestic negotiations between people and the vast landscape of our negotiations with Nature. A negotiation we seem to be losing right now. She prompts us to think about our relationship to the land, our relationship to knowledge and how we acquire it and to the construction and nurturing of community. It's an urgent prompt, but she isn't reproving us. She's posing a genuine question about our future to artists and audiences. Bernadette, Elena and Seamus are like us—just as smart and savvy and stranded, as many of us would be in a global—or domestic—crisis.
In the spirit of the play and its strong case for sharing knowledge freely, I'm going to pass on some things I learned about the play during rehearsals. The non-verbal life in this story is as important as the spoken text. The passage of time between scenes is a gift to a director and her team. Explore them as you would a scene. The spare stage directions for these transitions are an invitation for the creative team (and reader) to invent the physical and visual world of the play. Everything can be mined: unspoken conversations between characters, the presence of nature, the labour of surviving, even the specific relationships the characters have with objects—a favourite knife, a faulty zipper, a misplaced… etc. All this is fruitful territory to explore in rehearsals; give it the time and space to breathe and you will create a credible and rich world for these characters to inhabit.
Writers, in my experience, are very deliberate about their work. There isn't a word in this play that Yvette hasn't considered. Enter this universe with an open mind, and when confronted with contradictions, embrace them. The emotional complexity of the characters lies in this reconciling. There's action and story in the white space on the page. Listen closely and you will hear Yvette as if she is sitting right next to you—her unique rhythms, her sly humour, her generous politics.
—Rachel Ditor, Literary Manager, Arts Club Theatre Company
An excerpt of this play, originally titled Two Old Women, was read at Native Earth Performing Arts's Weesageechak Begins to Dance XXII on January 28, 2010, under the direction of Randy Reinholz, with performances by Maev Beatty, Patti Shaughnessy and James Cade.
The play underwent a further workshop at the Playwrights Theatre Centre in Vancouver in April 2010, once again under the direction of Randy Reinholz, with performances by Margo Kane, Marie Clements and Troy Kozuki.