Women of the Fur Trade: An Evening with Playwright and Journalist Frances Koncan

Name: Women of the Fur Trade: An Evening with Playwright and Journalist Frances Koncan
Start: 2025-09-15T18:30:00-07:00
End: 2025-09-15T20:00:00-07:00
Location: Vancouver Public Library

Schedule

Mon Sep 15 2025 at 06:30 pm to 08:00 pm

UTC-07:00

Location

Vancouver Public Library | Vancouver, BC

Frances Koncan's play Women of the Fur Trade is about the Métis-led Red River Resistance against European colonisers. In eighteen hundred and something something, somewhere upon the banks of a Reddish River in Treaty One Territory, three very different women with a preference for twenty-first century slang sit in a fort sharing their views on life, love, and the hot nerd Louis Riel.
Winner of the Toronto Fringe Best New Play Contest 2018, this lively historical satire of survival and cultural inheritance shifts perspectives from the male gaze onto women’s power in the past and present through the lens of the rapidly changing world of the Canadian fur trade.
Frances will be in conversation with Lois Anderson, Artistic Director at Touchstone Theatre for a delightful evening around the playwriting process and the Canadian theatre scene.
Storylines invites audiences into the creative worlds of Canada’s leading playwrights through a series of rich conversations presented by Touchstone Theatre and the Vancouver Public Library.
---
Frances Koncan is an Anishinaabe and Slovene playwright and theatre artist from Couchiching First Nation. They hold an MFA in Playwriting from the City University of New York Brooklyn College. They were the Writer-in-Residence at the Winnipeg Public Library (2022-2023) and Writer-in-Residence at the University of Manitoba (2021-2022), as well as journalist at the Winnipeg Free Press (2019-2021).
Productions of their work include Women of the Fur Trade (2023) at the Stratford Festival directed by Yvette Nolan, Women of the Fur Trade (2024) at the National Arts Centre Indigenous Theatre/Great Canadian Theatre Company directed by Renae Morriseau, Space Girl (2023) at Prairie Theatre Exchange directed by Krista Jackson, The Crows (2023) at Gwaandak Theatre directed by Miki Wolf, and Women of the Fur Trade (2020) at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre directed by Audrey Dwyer.
Lois Anderson is the Artistic Director of Touchstone Theatre, and an Adjunct Professor at UBC in the Department of Theatre and Film. She won the Jessie Award for Best Direction (Pericles, Bard on the Beach) and the 2019 Critic’s Choice Award for Innovation (Lysistrata). She has worked extensively in Canada and Australia and has been an Artistic Associate with The National Arts Centre most recently directing You Used to Call Me Marie by Tai Amy Grauman. Her directing credits include Behind the Moon, Henry V, Fun Home, Medea, Timothy Findley's The Wars, Iphigenia at Aulis, CHILDISH, Gertrude and Alice, Taming of the Shrew, My Granny the Goldfish, Buffoon.
In partnership with Touchstone Theatre.
---
VPL is committed to making our programs accessible for all. If you have an access need that we have not addressed here, please email us at [email protected].
*Elevator access to level 8 is available with the main elevators on level 2.
*The theatre has three wheelchair accessible spaces in the front row on the right hand side.
---
Please register. Registration is not required to attend, but it helps us anticipate attendance and send a reminder the day before the event, or any updates about this program.