First Person: Kelly Thornton on The Penelopiad

Megan Follows (l) and Bahia Watson (photo credit: Robert Popkin)

Giving Voice to the Voiceless

Staging The Penelopiad 

by Kelly Thornton

As the Artistic Director of Nightwood Theatre, it has been an epic journey to produce Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, but as Canada’s premiere feminist theatre, I don’t think there is a more fitting play for our company to have brought to the stage. 

The power of Atwood’s The Penelopiad is that her Penelope, captured in myth as the archetypical woman of virtue, chastely waiting for a long absent husband, is constructed as a wholly contemporary voice. Now with two thousand years of knowledge, of ongoing misrepresentation, of being made a grotesque example, “a stick used to beat other women ” into servitude, comes this outspoken messenger. 

Her voice is potent not only because it reframes The Odyssey, arguably the most popular myth of all time but because it calls into question the “heroic actions” of Odysseus. Rather than validating the existing social order, as myth had traditionally served to do, The Penelopiad dissects the ethics of such actions filtering it through such issues as gender and class. Here Atwood steps out from behind the tall shadow of patriarchal myth-making to “spin a thread of her own”. 

Review: (Toronto) The Penelopiad

Megan Follows (photo credit: Robert Popkin)

A Whimsical Production that Warrants Applause
...and a conversion...
by Alexandra Lelli

The word ‘contemporary’ gets thrown around a lot when describing Margaret Atwood’s ability to spin a yarn. In The Penelopiad – a revisionist account of Homer’s The Odyssey from the perspective of his virtuous wife, Penelope – Atwood’s cunning wit and relevant analysis of class, gender and privilege leaps off the page.

I am reluctant to admit I wasn’t a fan of Atwood’s novella (published in 2005) – reluctant because it makes me feel anti-Canadian. I felt like something was missing. Fortunately, Nightwood Theatre’s all-female cast brought Atwood’s contemporary epic to life. Under the direction of Kelly Thornton, who also acts as Artistic Director of Nightwood Theatre, my foray into the alluring shroud of “classical tragedy, Victorian melodrama, campy burlesque and rollicking song” had begun. I found my missing ingredient: this story was meant for the stage.

First-Person: Vanessa Porteous on The Penlopiad

(Clockwise from top): Meg Roe, Laara Sadiq, Rachel Aberle, Ming Hudson, 

Sarah Donald in the Arts Club Theatre Company's production of
The Penelopiad. Photo by David Cooper.

a world of echoes, shadows

A second shot at a beloved play

by Vanessa Porteous

It’s better to hear a play than to read it. I knew of The Penelopiad, which premiered in an international co-production between the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Arts Centre in 2007. But when I attended a workshop of the piece at Nightwood Theatre’s Director’s Summit in Toronto in November 2009, that’s when I knew I wanted to do it. I walked out into the late afternoon sun on Queen Street, thinking ‘Why can’t we do a play like that?’ Then it occurred to me: I was Artistic Director at Alberta Theatre Projects in Calgary, in the midst of planning the first season fully programmed by me. With some imagination, some cash, and some nerve, we could. So in September 2010, we did a Calgary production.

I knew immediately, right then on Queen Street, whom I wanted to play Penelope: Vancouver-based actor Meg Roe. Meg and I had worked together several times before, and I feel she is one of the most talented, creative, powerful and charismatic actors in the country.