I think it’s a fact that a lot of young people don’t always know how to feel about their home country. Canadians of all ages have a love-hate relationship with Canada, but maybe those of a younger generation feel it more. As social justice pushes forward, it becomes harder to uncritically enjoy the history, and current place, of a country that has treated, and continues to treat, many of its citizens horrendously. Everyone can find something to argue and be angry about, and more and more that dialogue is being commandeered by people with radical opinions. Young Canadians walk a tightrope. We want to criticize and dismantle the bad things in Canadian society, but many of us also want to celebrate and enjoy this country. …

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Photo of Puja Uppal as Noor Inayat Khan, Agent Madeleine, by Alex Henkelman.

Recruited by an understaffed and overworked British intelligence agency, led by Leo Marks, played by Nicholas Amott, Noor Inayat Khan, code name Madeleine, played by Puja Uppal, is parachuted into France. Her mission: spy on German troops and communicate her findings by coded radio transmission back to Britain. With scant backup from British Intelligence, and despite Marks’ obvious interest in his agent’s welfare, Madeleine is soon caught and thrown into a Gestapo detention centre. After interrogation her fate is even worse.

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The best Fringe shows arrive on the heat wave of a summer storm and hit just as hard. The lighting strike of revelation contained in the first three Fringe upon which I binged Thursday night was that the Fringe is thriving as a forum for plays that pack a political punch or grapple with challenging source text and big themes. New artists make their debut, while experienced professionals push boundaries.

The Geography Teacher’s Orders

Marta Singh has been circling the theatre scene via the storytelling circuit for a number of years. I was immersed in an earlier version of The Geography Teacher’s Orders in 2015 when she performed the piece for Ottawa StoryTellers at the National Arts Centre’s Fourth Stage. But the startling relevancy of Singh’s tale of a truly terrifying teacher is even more compelling, funny, and chilling now than it was then. This story is a sword of truth that cuts with a sharp edge. Singh’s flash from her adolescent past, played out in the shadow of post Junta Argentina, is a haunting memory that vividly brings to life the epic struggle between teacher and student. Will the geography teacher succeed in bringing her class to order? More to the point of her twisted, dictatorial understanding of education will she bend their individual and collective will into blind compliance as she assaults the sacred bastions of collective action and solidarity. Or, will the students succeed in staging a counter rebellion of compassion, fighting, in the case of one, with words mightier than her sword of oppression. You really do start to feel the rise of an inner democratic cheering section.

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