My body tensed as the lights went down in the theatre; a physical reminder of the tension surrounding conversations about race in the prairies. Joel Bernbaum received Saskatchewan Arts Board funds to conduct 50 interviews about ‘race relations in Saskatchewan’ to create a verbatim theatre play for Persephone Theatre (CBC, 2020). Then Colten Boushie was shot on the Stanley farm outside of Biggar, Saskatchewan. Bernbaum’s first 50 interviews soon became 200 interviews, and they would eventually form the source material for the play Reasonable Doubt which premiered at Persephone Theatre on January 29th, 2020 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Bernbaum recalled how the trial that followed changed the nature of his interviews “A more raw kind of honesty [began to emerge]” (CBC, 2020) which was reflected on stage. Bernbaum’s play Reasonable Doubt manages to get to the heart of present day racist ideologies that fuel continued racial divide in the Canadian Prairies.
Verbatim theatre offers a unique form to explore racial ideologies in the words of people living in this specific context. The Reasonable Doubt program says that “Verbatim theatre takes words spoken by the community and performed by the community” (Persephone, 2020) that means that every line spoken on stage has been said by a citizen, and the actor is trying to present their words in the same way as they were given in Bernbaum’s interviews. Marsha Leaderman reports that “One of the play’s great successes is taking court transcripts [. . .] and juxtaposing them with comments from regular folk” (Globe & Mail, 2020) this style of performance creates the feeling of dialogue even though the transcripts are from different times, places, and people. A collective narrative begins to emerge around race relations. Approximately 63 community members are performed by six actors on stage with the first name, age, gender, and ethnicity of each person projected on the set above them (Star Phoenix, 2020). Although the actors' race may not align with the person they are portraying the racial tensions are often apparent as soon as they open their mouth. Bernbaum said this choice was important because “it is helpful in this discussion that is very much about race to know who the original speakers were” (CBC, 2020). Some of the most telling passages are the ones that repeat the same racist ideology in many different voices; a series of newcomers spoke about the stereotypes they learnt about Indigenous people. They either came to Saskatoon having already heard that the Westside is “dangerous”, or one Syrian refugee described being told by his cab driver on his way home from the airport that Indigenous people are “lazy” or “dirty” and to be avoided. Other characters in the play described Indigenous boys as “boisterous” or “thugs”, or Indigenous people more generally as “not employable” (Globe & Mail, 2020). The strength of verbatim theatre is that the narratives about race that emerge are familiar to the audience because they were originally spoken by people that could be our neighbours, co-workers, friends and family.
Although the play is very clearly talking about race, whiteness is never directly addressed rather indirectly characterized. A pervasive sentiment spoken by many white interviewees is that “we deserve to feel safe” in our homes, yards, and streets. The bitter irony of these words is that the question of whether Gerald Stanley knew how to safely operate a gun could not be answered without “a reasonable doubt” by the jury. We hear the words of Stanley’s testimony from courtroom transcripts performed by Woolfe as a direct address to the audience. At one point a young Indigenous teen wonders aloud what the audience has been thinking “How could you accidentally shoot someone in the head?” (Globe & Mail, 2020), and as I watch his testimony on stage I go onto ask myself what does that say about the all white jury that acquitted him? A white man in his 50s at Lawson Mall confides that “I really hope he didn’t mean to shoot him because otherwise that would be awful”, but his candid uncertainty captures what is the lingering doubt left in the heart of a community left questioning their own race relations once the verdict has been served.
Works Cited:
Quenneville, Guy. “Upcoming Saskatoon play a ‘live documentary’ about the Gerald Stanley case” CBC News Blog. Published on December 12, 2019, updated on January 31st, 2020, accessed on February 10th, 2020:
Lederman, Marsha. “Reasonable Doubt is a dramatic, but not straightforward, account of Colten Boushie’s tragic end” Globe & Mail Theatre Reviews. Published on February 1st, 2020, accessed February 10th, 2020: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/theatre-and-performance/reviews/article-reasonable-doubt-is-a-dramatic-but-not-straightforward-account-of/
Star Phoenix. “Remaining performances of Persephone Theatre’s Reasonable Doubt completely sold out” Star Phoenix. Published February 7th, 2020, accessed February 10th, 2020:
This was originally written for Women & Gender Study 210: Feminism & Current Events at the University of Saskatchewan.