After Kandahar: Canadian Theatre’s Engagement with the War in Afghanistan

Abstract

The returned soldier has been a central figure in the first wave of Canadian plays to deal with the War in Afghanistan. Returned soldiers emerge as protagonists in Pierre-Michel Tremblay’s Au Champ de Mars, Hannah Moscovitch’s This Is War, and George F. Walker’s Dead Metaphor while Evan Webber and Frank Cox-O’Connell Little Iliad deals with a soldier about to be dispatched to Afghanistan. The returned soldier, a damaged warrior and a witness to acts of unspeakable evil, is a liminal figure, connecting the passive humdrum of Canadian life to the brutality of the war zone far away. This paper looks at how such stories of the trauma of soldiers alternately participate in and critique a view of Canadian foreign policy as a series of innocent interventions in conflicts with violent, irrational enemies.