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My Kingdom For a Canadian Alternative Theatre: The Richard III That Never Was

Of all the parts she played in her brief time as an actress during the late 1960s, the part my mother remembers most fondly is one she never got to perform – the role of
Richard III’s hump in Theatre Passe Muraille’s production of Richard III. The production was conceived of more than twenty years before I was born, and I’ve never seen video recordings, photographs, or even a review of the piece. In fact, the play was cancelled for financial reasons before it was ever performed. Despite this, for me, my mother’s role in the 1969 vision of Richard III represents a fascinating, and humorous, moment in which
Shakespeare and my own Canadian history come …show more content…

He was a gifted young writer and director who had offered his services to a number of Canadian professional companies and was ignored. He blamed his nationality: “The reason I couldn’t get a job was that I was Canadian. The theatres were run by Brits, and they were bringing over more Brits…
I thought, well, this has got to change. To a certain extent, that was fundamental to my whole career up to 1979” (Johnston 58). Richard III, then, was not intended to merely restage the bard’s work in imitation of British productions, as Kinch and Palmer felt was done at Stratford. It was to be something new.
The production of Richard III was to be highly experimental and featured my mother in a prominent role – she was Richard’s hump. My mother is a tiny Asian woman.
She claims to be five feet, but I remain skeptical. Clinging to the back of actor Don
Steinhouse (who would later go on to play the role of the farmer in The Farm Show), my mother’s part was to be toted across the stage, a human lump between Richard’s shoulders, the physical manifestation of his consciousness. During particularly intense monologues, my mother would climb down from her perch and act out Richard’s inner thoughts, expressively miming out the bitterness and vitriol of Richard’s soul. When 4
Richard wakes from the dream, then, and says, “O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!” my mother was to be by his bedside, dressed in black

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