A Letter For Molly is a bold step into the future for the Ensemble’s Artistic Director Mark Kilmurry, playwright Brittanie Shipway and the play’s director Ursula Yovich. There was a time when a play, which is not only new but also by, featuring and about First Nations women would have been the kiss of death for many theatre companies – the Ensemble in particular with its theatre-mad but conservative audience base. Not any more. How times have changed.

A Letter for Molly

A Letter for Molly, Ensemble Theatre, 2022. Photo © Prudence Upton

The show opens on an empty stage, backed by the wall of vertical blind slats (shared with the alternating production Still Unqualified). Shipway and Yovich anchor the opening in a timeless setting of women – Miimi (Lisa Maza) Darlene (Paula Nazarski), Linda (Nazaree Dickerson) and Renee (Shipway) – gathered around a bush camp fire. A smoking ceremony offers serenity in the flickering light as they sit, surrounded by the dark and the eyes that watch – as many generations in the audience as on the stage. So far, so familiar, but then…

Renee is a modern party girl...