Interview 1: An Interview with Richard Plant on Directing the First Production of Marsh Hay

This chapter presents an interview by Kailin Wright with Canadian theatre scholar and practitioner Richard Plant about his experience directing the first production of Merrill Denison&s;s play Marsh Hay (originally published in 1923). Although Denison is one of Canada&s;s preeminent playwrights, Marsh Hay was not performed until over 50 years after its publication. Following Plant&s;s first production of Marsh Hay in March 1974 at Toronto&s;s Hart House Theatre, it was produced in Montreal on June 12–23, 1974, by the Playwright&s;s Workshop Theatre and received its first professional production in 1996 at the Shaw Festival. Plant recalls the audience response, set design, and approach to the play as well as the prochoice protests down the street from Hart House Theatre. Plant also discusses the production as a cultural event (Denison was in attendance as part of a retrospective of Canadian theatre) and the treatment of reproduction in the 1970s. This interview explores the significance of reproductive loss in the play and a theatre review that suggests that a character (Sarilin) has a “self-induced abortion.”