The Diviners: A Play

Consensus Volume 46 Issue 2 Lutherans and the Nicene Creed Article 10 7-25-2025 The Diviners: A Play Jeffrey Dale Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus Part of the Theatre and Performance Studies Commons Recommended Citation Dale, Jeffrey (2025) "The Diviners: A Play," Consensus: Vol. 46: Iss. 2, Article 10. DOI: 10.51644/FIVZ7922 Available at: https://scholars.wlu.ca/consensus/vol46/iss2/10 This Book Reviews is brought to you for free and open access by Scholars Commons @ Laurier. It has been accepted for inclusion in Consensus by an authorized editor of Scholars Commons @ Laurier. For more information, please contact . Dale: The Diviners Book Review The Diviners: A Play Vern Thiessen with Yvette Nolan; based on the novel by Margaret Laurence Winnipeg: Scirocco Drama, 2024 S prawling and episodic in nature, Margaret Laurence’s novel The Diviners cultivates a world where author Morag Gunn’s struggles to finish her novel as her daughter, Piquette, yearns to connect with a community she has never known. Vern Thiessen and Yvette Nolan take on the monumental task of distilling Laurence’s seminal work into a theatrical experience in The Diviners: A Play. When The Diviners: A Play premiered at Stratford Festival I, as a lover of Laurence’s work, was excited to see the production. I saw it twice. I was equally excited to read the published play a few months later. In the introduction to the published version of The Diviners: A Play, Keith Barker, the Stratford Festival’s Director of New Play Development, explains that the play’s purpose is to engage Call #83 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission by bringing Indigenous and Settler artists together to create art that assists in reconciliation. Thiessen and Nolan rise to the challenge by wrestling with the living realities of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people across familial and community lines. Together, Thiessen and Nolan bring a new urgency and perspective to Laurence’s work by considering how each character reconciles their relationship with themself, the community, and the landscape. Central to the play is Morag Gunn, an author with some notoriety but limited financial resources. Throughout the play the reader is transported through time and space, quite rapidly, from Morag’s writing desk in the present day to her past in Manawaka and Toronto. Morag’s narrative intersects with that of a Métis family from Manawaka, the Tonnerre family, whose son Jules is Piquette’s father. By intentionally weaving the Tonnerre narrative with Morag’s story, Thiessen and Nolan highlight the Métis narratives more directly than Laurance did in the original text and provide perspective on the White/Settlers’ disregard for and trivialization of the Métis people. Through music, Thiessen and Nolan give breath to the Métis people of Manawaka. By infusing the narrative with Métis, Indigenous, and English music, Nolan and Thiessen evoke a sense of place as being both physical and spiritual. In Laurence’s originally published novel, the final section of the book is reserved for the songs and music that appeared in the book, whereas in Thiessen and Nolan’s adaptation the text is provided to the reader, but the melody itself is indicated in stage directions. Here the reader misses out on what the stage version engages so expressively, as musicians take places of prominence and are able to blend the action with the music. In the stage play, for example, one moment of music stands out when Morag is frantically striking her typewriter, which in its own way becomes a significant character in the stage adaptation, and the company joins her onstage dancing with bold movements. But in the published version this is expressed through simple stage directions: “The company enters. Morag writes. It is an expansive, exhilarating dance, growing and growing until … the pages are flying in the air and settling back down on her desk. The novel is complete” (p. 98). The reader does miss out on what was theatrically Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2025 1 Consensus, Vol. 46, Iss. 2 [2025], Art. 10 moving for the audience, which would be difficult to replicate in stage directions. However, now future directors are gifted with the opportunity to cultivate this moment. What the script conveys so distinctly well are the themes of water and land. Water is the spiritual connector for The Diviners: A Play. It is how the play gets its title, as Royland, Morag’s neighbour, divines for water in the local community. Water is also the point of discovery for each of the characters as it becomes the very element that sustains life and beckons them to be in continuous movement. For example, Christie, the man a young Morag goes to live with after her parents die, tells Morag stories of the ancient Scots and their travels across the Atlantic to arrive in Manawaka. In Christie’s storytelling, the water precipitates a displacement to territories unknown to the Clan Gunn. Christie’s story ends with Piper Gunn and his people arriving at the Red River—a place that in the Canadian context is deeply linked to Riel and the Métis people. Also, like the rivers that flow, so too the Clan Gunn disperses throughout their newfound land—leading towards further conversations regarding reconciliation as White and Ingenious people continue to interact in a myriad of ways. Reconciliation is found between Morgan and the company when they both assert that, “the river flows both ways” (p. 27). Here, symbolism of the water penetrates history and generations by revealing truths that one would prefer to be long buried or negated and connecting the characters to their needs. It is Morag’s plight throughout the play that catches the reader in the desire to delve deeply into the darkest depths of the water and escape the violence and destruction caused by being forced to live on the land where violence and eradication are viscerally present. As water represents connection and truth, the land then represents the revelation of dissonance. For Christie, who is the town’s garbage collector, the land holds the secrets of the wealthy and privileged of Manawaka buried in the Nuisance Ground, the town’s landfill. These secretes expose themselves as truths in Christie’s vulnerable moments, yet the reader knows that what is revealed was not buried that deeply. Piquette becomes the counterpoint to Christie in Morag’s life, as it is in her strongest moments that she engages the harshness of the land with a desire to conquer the past. Piquette then represents the way in which the land forces memories to be dug up through Morag’s work so that Manawaka may be mapped fully—blemishes and all. It is through Morag’s impulse to write and write, even when confronted with the past, that the reader can feel the land moving as if it were water itself. It is as if the land is challenging Morag to run across the distance of time and memory with unrelenting determination that the (...truncated)