Frances Koncan’s Women of the Fur Trade, directed by Yvette Nolan, is now onstage at the Stratford Festival’s Studio Theatre.

In eighteen hundred and something-something, somewhere upon the banks of a reddish river in Treaty One Territory, three very different women with a preference for 21st-century slang sit in a fort sharing their views on life, love and the hot nerd Louis Riel. In this lively historical satire of survival and cultural inheritance, playwright Frances Koncan shifts perspectives from the male gaze onto women’s power in the past and present through the lens of the rapidly changing world of the Canadian fur trade.

“Frances’s approach to our shared histories is irreverent, bridging the past and the future with an ever-present present, anachronistic and therefore timeless,” says Nolan. “Her women are funny and clever, resilient and fierce, complicated and resistant to the stories that have tried to define them. They remind us all that we are part of a continuum, that we have lived together here in conflict and in peace and will continue to do so.”

Women of the Fur Trade features Jenna-Lee Hyde as Cecilia, Kathleen MacLean as Marie-Angelique and Joelle Peters as Eugenia with Keith Barker as Louis Riel and Nathan Howe as Thomas Scott. This powerful yet playful production features the creative work of Set Designer Samantha McCue, Costume Designer Jeff Chief, Lighting Designer Michelle Ramsay, Composer and Sound Designer Debashis Sinha and Supervising Fight Director Geoff Scovell.

Women of the Fur Trade has its official opening on July 15 and runs until July 30 in the Studio Theatre. Tickets are available at stratfordfestival.ca or by calling 1.800.567.1600.

The 2023 season also features King Lear, Rent, Much Ado About Nothing, Les Belles-Soeurs, Monty Python’s Spamalot, A Wrinkle in Time, Frankenstein Revived, Grand Magic, Richard II, Wedding Band, Casey and Diana and Love’s Labour’s Lost. For more information, visit stratfordfestival.ca.

Photo: Joelle Peters. © 2023 Ted Belton.