The Country in Her Throat, Beyond The Ruins

Abstract

In the wake of a powerfully divisive political exercise such as the Quebec referendum, tribal partisan rhetoric of power-hungry political demagogues is creating a dominant perception of three Canadian solitudes. As a Montrealer of Greek cultural heritage, with a keen interest in the potency of Canadian and Quebec theatre to function as a catalyst for philosophical and ethical reflection, and as an educator concerned with exposing stringent ethnocentric intolerance within a supposedly multicultural society, I feel it significant to articulate the political context within which I have chosen to write this review. A prevailing sense of cultural malaise permeates the angst-ridden soul of this nation’s ethnic and racial minorities, discerned in a cautious silence infiltrating the streets of post-referendum Montreal, and superbly captured in the two plays written by Marco Micone and Simon Fortin. It is only timely to review these two play texts that explore those seminal issues of cultural and political assimilation facing ethnic and racial minorities within Canada and Quebec. The voices of the culturally disenfranchised, the victims of partisan ideologies and of cultural assimilation, speak through these plays and can serve to remind us of the human casualties often overlooked when ideological passions obfuscate the revealing powers of human empathy, sensitivity, and logic.