Play about a fictional residential school running in Toronto

Richard Comeau got quite a bit more than he bargained for when he agreed to help workshop a play four years ago.

The setting for that play, co-written by Metis playwright Jani Lauzon and Kaitlyn Riordan, who is non-Indigenous, is titled 1939.

Comeau is now appearing in his third run of the play, which is presented by Canadian Stage at Toronto’s Berkeley Street Theatre. Opening night was Sept. 15 and the Toronto run continues until Oct. 6. 

Comeau, who is now 41, plays Joseph Summers, a 17-year-old boy in the play, which is set at a fictional residential school in northern Ontario.

Since King George VI is coming to the school for a visit, a teacher gets her students to produce the play All’s Well That Ends Well.

Students at the school, however, have differing views from their teacher about how the play should be performed once they find parallels between themselves and characters they are portraying.

“I fell in love with it,” Comeau said of when he workshopped the play.

But he never envisioned himself performing in 1939. Well, he was featured in the play when it had a run in Stratford, Ont. in 2022. And he also performed in the play during a run in the northern Ontario city of Sudbury earlier this year.

“I never thought I would play in this role, especially given my age was much higher than the actual character,” Comeau said. “But I really loved the writing. I really love the story. It’s so brilliantly done and the incorporation of the humour to help these characters deal and cope with the issues that they’re being dealt with is so fantastically done.

“And I feel it’s like a really great step towards helping an audience understand what these kids have gone through throughout residential schools.”

Comeau, who is Metis and Mi’kmaq, is not 100 per cent certain if any of his family members actually attended residential school.

“Our family hasn’t talked much about anything like that,” he said. “The generational trauma stuff is definitely there. I don’t know whether or not it comes from residential schools. My dad doesn’t know where my grandpa went to school. I don’t know where my grandpa went to school. All of the stuff my dad had to deal with his dad was pretty, pretty, pretty hard.”

Comeau is pleased though with the way 1939 is presented.

“It’s not really a story that shoves it in your face,” he said. “It’s more subtle. And it’s based on the resiliency of these students. And I really appreciate that.”

Comeau also loves the fact he is performing in his current hometown of Toronto. He was born in Elliot Lake, Ont. but grew up in Sudbury and another northern town in the province, Fort Frances.

“I think it’s very important for myself because as an actor I’ve had very little opportunity to perform in the town that I live in,” he said. “So, I was very fortunate to do a show up in Sudbury this year because that’s where my family is. And this is one of the very few times that I’ve had an opportunity to perform, at least on a larger scale, here in Toronto.

“So, it’s very important to me because I have a lot of people that have been supporting me throughout the years. And now they’ll actually have an opportunity to come see a show. The trek to Stratford is not exactly the easiest, especially since most of my friends don’t drive.”

Meanwhile, Grace Lamarche, a Cree/Métis actor, is also performing in 1939. She plays the character Beth Summers, Joseph’s sister. Lamarche, who is 24, plays a 15-year-old.

“This play does a really awesome job of articulating Indigenous resilience,” Lamarche said. “And from my own and my family’s experiences I do have a direct tie to the residential school system. My grandmother and my great aunt were in the system.”

That’s why Lamarche is excited to be involved in 1939.

“This play, on one hand is a way to honour them and honour the pain they went through in a way that was articulating their resilience through the story,” she said. “This play feels like the most aligned and supportive way to do that. I feel really honoured and lucky to be able to do that.”

Lamarche said her grandmother, who died a few years ago, had a major role in her life while growing up.

“I think people that come out of the residential school system they all have a really different way of coping with what happened to them within the schools,” Lamarche added. “And with my grandmother it was a lot of repressing and not talking about it. So, it was only in the last years of her life that she really started opening up about her childhood, her Indigeneity and taking ownership of that and what that means for her.”

Tickets for the Toronto run of 1939 can be purchased through https://my.canadianstage.com/events