On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

I went to see Chasing Boudicca last night at the National Arts Centre's Fourth Stage.

Based on a poetry collection by Kathleen Hunt, and performed by the aforesaid Kathleen in company with Marie Bilodeau, Ruthanne Edward, and musician Nathan Bishop, the show was inspired by the life, battles, pains, victories, defeats and debated death of the namesake warrior queen of ancient British legend...a legend that goes back two millennia.

As Kathleen noted in the performance, we know of her mainly through the writings of her surviving enemies, for she did not live long enough to tell her own tales on her own terms.

In some respects, you can draw a parallel between Boudicca and our own Louis Riel. In others, it's far more difficult and not just due to the politics, the geography and the passage of nearly two millennia between the lives of those doomed rebels. Riel at least managed to put his own story as best he could on the record at his trial in Regina.

And yet I believe that Kathryn's managed as much for the last queen of the Iceni.

At the very least, she and her friends brought me to tears by the end of the show.

And that is not a complaint. Not at all. Not ever.

Thank you for this.