“a profound, beautifully crafted play” – Hoile, Stage Door
Aubree Erickson, Heather Marie Annis, Ellen Denny and Siobhan O’Malley star in Here For Now Theatre‘s 2021 premiere production of Post Alice. (Claire Scott, York Lane Art Collective photo)
Inspired by four haunting characters from four iconic Alice Munro stories, Post Alice written by Taylor Marie Graham is a stunning new contemporary play which asks the question: what really happened to Mistie Murray? And what happens to all our missing girls? Come sit around the fire with four bright and hilarious Huron County women as ghost stories emerge, songs fill the air, family secrets are revealed, and mysteries unravel into those wonderful contradictions which live inside us all.
“Powerful, powerful, and courageous . . . Post Alice is one of those plays that needs to be discussed later to see how others responded to such fine work. Outstanding and true ensemble work.” – Joe Szekeres, OnStage Blog
Actors of Post Alice on stage at Blyth Festival Harvest Theatre as part of the Alice Munro Festival in 2024. From Left: Heather Marie Annis as Onora, Siobhan O’Malley as Belle, Aubree Erickson as Edie, Zara Jestadt as Wenlock. (Rachel Hammermueller photo)
“Taylor Marie Graham has written an arresting and funny play about women and their friendships, coping with a troubled past and supporting each other” – Lynn Slotkin, The Slotkin Letter
Cottage Radio & Other Plays: Cottage Radio, White Wedding, & Post Alice animates a wild cast of Southwestern Ontario characters – particularly its strong, hilarious rural women – with complex histories and relationships to the land. The titlular Cottage Radio zeroes in on the sarcastic, charismatic Marley clan as they band together in the aftermath of a storm. White Wedding is a large-cast comedy set at a wedding reception in an old high school, where friends and lovers sneak off to reconnect and swim in nostalgia. Post Alice weaves a true Huron County mystery into an evening of stories, song, and secrets as four women (reminiscent of four of Alice Munro’s protagonists) gather around a fire and begin to wonder what really happened to Mistie Murray, a teenager who disappeared in the mid-nineties.
“Cottage Radio is a dynamic, complex, and very funny play . . . powerful” – Judith Thompson, Playwright
“White Wedding [is] . . . an uncommonly cool theatrical experience” – Jackie Mahoney, Mooney on Theatre
“[Post Alice is] one of the most exciting new Canadian plays I’ve seen for some time . . . profound, beautifully crafted” – Christopher Hoile, Stage Door
“Graham’s characters put shovel to grave on the skeletons in their backyards . . . everything was revealed around a campfire. Locals will understand the magic that kind of gathering place possesses. You either hear the funniest story of your life sharing a drink or you hash out the most troubling beef you have with someone across the flames. It’s a sacred circle in this countryside . . . As the actors took a bow, it was apparent how important rural storytelling is, and why it must continue. Like Munro’s example, words fuel life and give us conversations to – in the words of Post Alice – figure out ‘how to live in this bizarre thing called life’.” – Rachel Hammermueller, Wingham Advance Times
Heather Marie Annis, Ellen Denny and Siobhan O’Malley star in Here For Now Theatre‘s 2021 premiere production of Post Alice. (Claire Scott, York Lane Art Collective photo)
“In her play Post Alice Graham takes four characters from four Munro stories and puts them around a campfire for one night. They reckon with their pasts, each other and one of the biggest mysteries in Southwestern Ontario’s history – what happened to Mistie Murray, a 16-year-old Goderich girl who disappeared in May 1995″ – Terry Pender, Waterloo Record
“2021: Year in Review . . . Post Alice by Taylor Marie Graham at the Here For Now Theatre Festival, Stratford. Another hit for HFNT was Graham’s imaginative play that united four women from different short stories by Alice Munro. In exploring how the four have been haunted by a real event that happened in 1995, Graham created one of the best new Canadian plays I’ve seen in a long time – a lyrical meditation on the loss of the past and the loss of the people we once thought we were.” – Christopher Hoile, Stage Door
TAYLOR MARIE GRAHAM 