Last week I attended the opening performance of Matchstick at the Great Canadian Theatre Company, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Although there is plenty to say about the production, there is an aspect of the play that stood out for me more than anything else, and no one so far seems to have touched on it in writing – though I have had a few conversations with fellow theatre goers that reassure me that my reaction was not unique.
Matchstick is a folk musical about a young orphan girl in an ‘undesirable country’, who eventually grows up, finds love, and moves with her new husband – not as lovely as he first seems – to the ‘land of opportunity’. Straight-forward enough.
Now the thing about this play, and one of the reasons why it seems to have done so well on the Fringe circuit (notably Ottawa Fringe 2013) and beyond, is that it has a very curious twist that some people may register early on, and others closer to the end of the piece. It highlights a historical moment in time that most of us will recognize, and I won’t make an enemy of the creators by revealing what that moment is.
I will say that at the point at which I understood the twist, I found myself feeling very aggravated. For one simple reason: the twist is that this woman’s story is eventually revealed to be a story centred on a man.
Perhaps you’re wondering why this is so important. Plainly speaking, I don’t see and hear enough stories about women. And this particular story was at first exploring some interesting ideas from the woman’s perspective surrounding domestic abuse*, immigration, language development, relationship expectations, child rearing, and striving for independence despite challenging and gendered circumstances. But for me, all these efforts to incite empathy for and interest in the central female character were negated by the fact that we, the audience, are supposed to be deeply affected by the revelation that her story is being told, arguably, for the sake of referencing a male historical figure.
Conversely, it could be debated that regardless of how the play ended, the majority of its content did still focus on the life and thoughts of this woman. But then my question would be, Why wasn’t that enough? Did the story require an extra special male-focused something to make it more stimulating? Or maybe the production was, in fact, highlighting the fact that women’s stories frequently get lost in history (rather than ‘herstory’) in favour of the male experience and perspective. But then, I don’t believe that was made explicit.
Either way, I would like to see female characters own the stories they deserve. Because there is so much I want to learn from them.
*One lyric stuck with me: “I spent New Year’s Eve in a bathtub / Because I married a crocodile / He dragged me into his home / No, I came on my own.” What a perfect way to capture the shame, guilt, depression, and anger that comes with domestic abuse.
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