Building Houses

From the playwright who brought you Our Eliza and Falling Trees, Megan Gail Coles’ newest play Building Houses takes the stage this August at the Gros Morne Theatre Festival.   

Mid summer 1828. Newfoundland is a British Colony maintaining undefined treaty rights with the French along the north coast where residents are labelled squatters by the crown.  

Shanawdithit has been taken from her family and is being kept at a plantation house in St. John’s by a European explorer staking his reputation on her cooperation. In the Straits, young Suzanna Williams is sent to live with her grandmother Hosanna while an Indigenous guide named John is tasked with searching for Beothuk on the Great Northern Peninsula. 

A bold retelling of family, greed, resilience and grit, Building Houses asks you to reconsider what you believe about our shared origin story. And why.