杏吧原创 University English professor Adam Barrows says he has carried a lesson from every theatre role he鈥檚 taken on throughout his life.

His most recent one, General L枚wenheim in 9th Hour Theatre Company鈥檚 production of Babette鈥檚 Feast, is no exception.

The play follows two Lutheran sisters, and how their community in northern Norway embraces French refugee Babette. What follows is a story of transformation through art, grace and acceptance, culminating in a feast prepared by Babette. 

The show will run at聽聽from Nov. 6 to 15.聽

The Charlatan sat down with Barrows to learn more about his history with theatre and the meaning behind Babette鈥檚 Feast. 

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By Sophie Drache and Erica Raley

In preparation for the 2025-2026 Munro-Beattie Lecture on October 15th, students Sophie Drache and Erica Raley spoke with lecturer  over the phone about trans relationships, censorship, and the power of storytelling in creating networks of resistance. Ivan Coyote is a writer, storyteller and performer. They have created four films, seven stage shows, three albums, and authored 13 books. Their most recent book published in 2021, Care Of, is a collection of correspondences between Ivan, fans, readers and audience members, co-authoring a story of relationality that Ivan says is essential in our modern political moment. 

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Sumac Literary Magazine is named after and inspired by the staghorn sumac plant that grows on the 杏吧原创 University campus. While staghorn sumac thrives throughout the City of Ottawa, varieties of sumac are also found around the world. The Algonquin word for sumac is 鈥淜脿g脿giminaganj,鈥� or 鈥淜脿g脿gimin鈥� meaning 鈥渇ruit of the sumac.鈥� In Algonquin communities, as in other communities and cultures, sumac plants are used in recipes, medicines, and textiles. We acknowledge that our teams and facilities are situated on the traditional and unceded territories of the Algonquin nation, and that many of us are uninvited guests on this land. We acknowledge and thank the stewards and caretakers of this land and watershed. Their presence here reaches back to time immemorial and we hope that our contribution, Sumac Literary Magazine, has a positive impact.

Read Issue Three: Planting Roots, .

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By Maya Chorney

Portrait by Travis Silverman; Front Cover of Ann-Marie MacDonald鈥檚 2022 Novel Fayne

In advance of the annual Munro Beattie Lecture on February 4, acclaimed author, actor, and playwright Ann-Marie MacDonald sat down with to discuss her multidisciplinary career, the power of storytelling, and the political dimensions of her work. This conversation offers a glimpse into the themes she will explore in her upcoming lecture, Imps and Imposters: Where Do Stories Come From?, at the 杏吧原创 Dominion-Chalmers Centre.

Maya Chorney, (M.A. Candidate, Department of English)

Maya: Your career started out in theatre. You trained at the National Theatre School of Canada, you鈥檝e performed for the stage and the screen, and you have also authored and co-authored several plays.

How has your theatre background influenced the trajectory of your writing career? And how did those early experiences in writing for the stage inform how you would later approach novel writing?

Ann-Marie: My theatre background gave rise to my fiction writing, quite literally, because I set out to write a play which then became Fall on Your Knees. I was simply acknowledging that the story wanted to be born into a different kind of body. It didn鈥檛 want to arrive in the world as a play, it wanted to arrive as a novel, and I followed that. Then it became a play again in a wonderful kind of evolution where it returned to its genesis.

Acting also informed my writing for theatre because I always write from the point of view of performance: How is this going to be experienced on stage by the actors, the director, the designers, and the audience? Always writing with those many dimensions in mind. When I wrote Goodnight Desdemona, it was the first play I wrote that I knew I was not going to be in. That freed me up to really pay attention to the parental metaphor 鈥渁ll my children.鈥� I realized, oh, I鈥檓 going to take equal responsibility for every single character arc as well as for how they all come together in the overarching plot. And that was a hugely important step. All my writing is informed by my experience of embodying story as an actor. And in turn, my writing for theatre has informed my fiction writing because I鈥檓 always trying to create a three-dimensional, immersive experience for the reader.

Maya: On the topic of being a multidisciplinary artist, I鈥檝e always been interested in having what we might call a 鈥渟lash career,鈥� and learning about how other people make this kind of career work for them. You know, not limiting yourself to being just one thing for your whole life.

Can you tell me more about that willingness to remain fluid and follow your curiosity? What advice would you give to young writers who want to maintain their craft alongside other pursuits?

Ann-Marie: That adaptability is more important than ever now. And I certainly grew up with that. I grew up with a mother who really believed that you have to use all of your talents, pursue all of your gifts. My father, too, was a great proponent of changing careers. It was a different time and place, because you could do that more safely in the mid to late twentieth century. Things are more precarious now than they were then, which of course means that, in turn, you need to be ready to be adaptable more than ever. That readiness is more important than ever.

I鈥檝e never heard anyone use the term 鈥渟lash career,鈥� but it really resonates. I鈥檝e been an actor for stage, television, and film, a playwright, a screenwriter, a broadcast host, a novel writer鈥鈥檝e never seen them as being essentially different. They鈥檝e always been different ways of doing one thing, which is telling stories.

From my perspective now, I have a lot of compassion for people who are in your cohort, your generation. You are highly educated, extremely aware, and living in a more precarious world than the one in which I came of age. There鈥檚 always precarity, there鈥檚 always some kind of threat, there鈥檚 always challenge. The world is never a Garden of Eden. But there is an intensification. There鈥檚 a gigification of work. And I think, 鈥渨ow, that鈥檚 really hard.鈥� I like to honour the younger generation by saying I respect your challenges鈥攖hey鈥檙e serious. And I don鈥檛 think anyone does much without the help of the older generation. We鈥檙e all in this together.

Maya: I鈥檇 like to dwell in the realm of the political a bit longer. In an interview with , you described how binaries have been a dominant concern for your entire career. You went on to say that your most recent novel, Fayne, 鈥渋s the ultimate challenge to any binary notion, whether it is of our body, our sexuality, our gender, or the nature of reality and our world itself, and the discovery of what is truly valuable.鈥� As a queer feminist storyteller and scholar, what really stands out to me in your work is how you write marginalized narratives back into the literary record. Fayne is a clear recent example of this, but it鈥檚 also prevalent in earlier work like Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), which doesn鈥檛 so much queer Shakespeare as it plays with the gender fluidity already inherent in the Bard鈥檚 productions.

Can you share a bit more about your thoughts on literature as a platform for writing about those historically marginalized narratives, or of the relationship between art and politics more broadly?

Ann-Marie: I love to play with established and traditional forms. With Fayne, I use the gothic novel, the Victorian novel, full of tropes and devices and conventions and conceits which are completely delightful and familiar. They鈥檙e deeply familiar. Even anyone who鈥檚 never read a Victorian novel has watched a Netflix series set in the late nineteenth century, on a moor or in a mansion, set somewhere in the United Kingdom. We are familiar with these conventions. I feel like I鈥檝e done that with most of my work, where I鈥檓 going to play with a familiar form, I鈥檓 going to enjoy that form, I鈥檓 going to offer the delights of that form to the reader or the audience member. And it鈥檚 going to allow me to take the audience or a reader on a journey they might not otherwise take and engage with and identify with people they might normally think of as being very other or repellent or frightening or just wrong.

And so, hopefully I鈥檝e made the invitation welcoming and gracious enough that people go 鈥渟ure, I鈥檓 coming with you.鈥� And then by the time they鈥檙e surrounded by people they would never ordinarily even say 鈥渉ello鈥� to, it鈥檚 too late. They鈥檙e having a cup of tea with them, or they鈥檙e going on a mortal quest with them. They鈥檙e aligned, they鈥檙e identified, they鈥檙e seeing through somebody else鈥檚 lens, somebody else鈥檚 point of view. Point of view is everything. That鈥檚 it really. I鈥檝e never been the kind of artist who needs to assault the reader or the audience, to prove how important it is that you listen to me and how wrong you are. I鈥檇 rather invite you. I think the kind of change that is possible when you actually invite people is much more radical and profound and long lasting.

Maya: So, a gentle invitation to be more open.

Ann-Marie: Yes, and I think that is radical and profound and has longevity. I think it makes lasting, deep change.

Maya: Now, of course, you鈥檝e written plenty of historical fiction.

Do you write as you research? How do you know when to stop thinking and researching, and when to start writing?

Ann-Marie: I think the process is not just in tandem鈥攂ack and forth鈥攂ut one process bleeds into the other. So, the edges of research becoming writing are blurred, as with everything. And that鈥檚 where the richness lies, in that uncertainty, that blurriness, in that 鈥渁ctually, I鈥檝e absorbed enough of that to go off into that new blank page.鈥� So, there鈥檚 a lot of overlap. It鈥檚 almost as if you鈥檙e on a rowboat and you鈥檙e crossing a body of water. And then you feel that you鈥檙e contacting the seabed, there鈥檚 sand on the keel. And then you say to yourself, 鈥渙kay, I鈥檝e run aground, I need to deepen things again. I need to learn something again.鈥� So I go back to the research, and then my boat is freed up again.

Maya: Where do you get your inspiration from, these days?

Ann-Marie: I never know until it鈥檚 already happened. Kind of like 鈥渙h, well that鈥檚 where that came from!鈥� Right now, I鈥檓 working on a one-woman show. I鈥檓 drawing inspiration from my own life experience in a very open, direct way. But because it鈥檚 going to be embodied in movement and sound and performance, there鈥檚 a funny kind of thing. Because I鈥檓 working on a one-person show for myself to perform, I鈥檓 willing to be very personal in the material that I use, directly autobiographical in a way that I never am when I鈥檓 writing fiction or theatre. And I think the reason I鈥檓 doing that is that I know I鈥檓 going to be embodying it, performing it鈥攊t鈥檚 going to be me and the audience in real time. And for some reason, that feels less exposing than were I to sit down and write a memoir, the idea of which every fibre of my being is allergic to. But I鈥檒l perform a memoir!

Research is very important. There are a lot of things which I intuit. And as I get older I have more and more material. More and more experience. I may have lived something or feel I have a strong intuitive grasp of something, which tells me that I鈥檓 capable of getting something right on the inside of it, but it also tells me not to take for granted that I have all the information that I need. To me, that is always an indication that I have a lot of learning to do. I鈥檓 always wanting to put something that I may understand intuitively into a larger context. And I want to get it right, because I think it does not make itself. I need to learn a whole lot so that I have a grasp of a subject so that the characters can have maybe a faulty grasp or a contradictory grasp. But I know the whole picture.

Maya: Kind of learning the rules so you can break them, even if it鈥檚 through the characters.

Ann-Marie: Exactly. I think that鈥檚 also part of the trust that is necessary between writer and reader. I take that trust very seriously.

Maya: To finish up, are there any books, plays, or films you have enjoyed recently?

Ann-Marie: I just saw a play at Crow鈥檚 Theatre here in Toronto. It鈥檚 called Dinner with the Duchess and it鈥檚 by Nick Green. The writing and the acting and the production were absolutely a tour de force. There are probably no more than five shows I have ever seen in my lifetime where I would use that descriptor. It was absolutely great. I loved it.

Most of the books I read are non-fiction. There鈥檚 a book that I read fairly recently, which I absolutely loved. It鈥檚 called The Utopia of Rules. It鈥檚 all about the rise of bureaucracy. It鈥檚 by an author named David Graeber, who is unfortunately deceased. He died during Covid at quite a young age. But it鈥檚 a book that says a lot about our world.

Maya: I feel that a book about bureaucracy would definitely go over well with an Ottawa audience.

Ann-Marie: Right? Absolutely. It鈥檚 a book about bureaucracy and it鈥檚 a page turner鈥攚hich sounds like a joke, but it really is! It鈥檚 funny and it鈥檚 incredibly smart.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

The Office of the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the Department of English Language and Literature invite you to join us for the 2024-2025 Munro Beattie Lecture, 鈥淚mps and Imposters: Where Do Stories Come From鈥�, with author, actor, and playwright, Ann-Marie MacDonald. It will take place at 7:30 pm on February 4 at the 杏吧原创 Dominion-Chalmers Centre.

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