Excavation Theatre Announces Production Of Critically Acclaimed Canadian Play WHAT A YOUNG WIFE OUGHT TO KNOW

An unflinching look at love, sex, class, and fertility - Excavation Theatre brings Hannah Moscovitch's critically acclaimed play What a Young Wife Ought to Know to the Vancouver stage March 24 - April 1, 2023 at Performance Works on Granville Island.

It's Ottawa in the 1920s, pre-legalized birth control. Sophie (Bronwyn Henderson), a young working-class girl, falls madly in love with and marries a stable-hand named Jonny (Michael Briganti). After two difficult childbirths, doctors tell Sophie she shouldn't have any more children, but don't tell her how to prevent it. When Sophie inevitably becomes pregnant again, she faces a grim dilemma. Inspired by real stories of mothers during the Canadian birth-control movement of the early twentieth century, one of Canada's most celebrated playwrights vividly recreates a couple's struggles with reproduction.

Halifax's 2b Theatre premiered What a Young Wife Ought to Know at Neptune Theatre in 2015 and toured nationally to critical acclaim. Excavation Theatre's production will be playing in the final weeks of Women's History Month, exactly one hundred years after Canada's first birth-control advocacy group was formed in Vancouver, and fresh off the landmark announcement that birth control prescriptions will be free in BC starting April 1, 2023. This will be the play's first BC production, directed by Jessica Anne Nelson.

For their creative team, Excavation Theatre has assembled Jessie-nominated set designer Kimira Reddy, technical director and lighting designer Victoria Bell, sound designer Jack Goodison, costume designer and intimacy director Michelle Thorne, fight director Mike Kovac, and stage manager Gabriella Hu.

Of the play, Nelson said, "Hannah has transported us back in time with What a Young Wife Ought to Know and given not only the audience a chance to peek into the lives and hardships of working class women 100 years ago, but also the main character of sweet idealistic Sophie the chance to pick the brains of the modern woman. Speaking directly to the audience throughout the play, Sophie is struggling to know what to do with the circumstances she's found herself in: pregnant again for the fifth time, unable to properly feed herself, her husband, and their children. No one will help her prevent pregnancies and yet doctors are telling her that she shouldn't have any more children due to her health, so what option is she left with? The play is a tornado that sweeps the characters and audience along for the story, never once slowing down or shying away from the hard and tragic truths of what can happen when someone must take their sexual/reproductive health into their own hands. Peppered with moments of honesty, heart and humour, contrasted against the bleakness of what Sophie must do for her own sanity, health, and wellbeing of her family, I'm excited to bring a story about the need for a womxn's right to choose, the right for access to proper reproductive and sexual health, to the stage with such a talented and passionate group of artists."

Charlotte Wright, who will be playing Sophie's sister Alma in this production, said, "It's 2023, and yet women's body autonomy is thrown into question, yet again. We've moved three years forward and yet a hundred years back. We are bringing to life a story and a topic that is both 100 years old and happening all over again, right in front of us."

Hannah Moscovitch is an acclaimed Canadian playwright, TV writer, and librettist whose work has been widely produced in Canada and around the world. Recent stage work includes Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes and Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story (co-created with Christian Barry and Ben Caplan). Hannah has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Governor General's Literary Award for Drama, Trillium Book Award, the Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award, the Scotsman Fringe First and the Herald Angel Awards at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize administered by Yale University. She has been nominated for the international Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, the Drama Desk Award, and Canada's Siminovitch Prize in Theatre. She is a playwright-in-residence at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto. She spends her time between Halifax and Los Angeles.

Tickets & Info at excavationtheatre.com

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