“You are walking down a long road that will branch and branch again, and your life is full of choices with huge and unpredictable consequences,” writes Rebecca Solnit in her 2020 book of essays Recollections of My Nonexistence. “You are making something, a life, a self, and it is an intensely creative task as well as one at which it is more than possible to fail, a little, a lot, miserably, fatally.”
Youth, Solnit posits, is a “high-risk business” for a woman.
Solnit perfectly captures the sensibility of the four young women at the heart of Fall On Your Knees, Ann-Marie MacDonald’s iconic Canadian novel. In the book, four sisters fuelled by their drive for connection and love struggle to make “a life, a self” for themselves. Their “intensely creative task” of carving out their lives takes place, as it does for far too many women, within a context of dangerous family secrets and sexual abuse.
First published in 1996 to massive public acclaim, Fall On Your Knees touched a nerve and spoke to millions of readers, both nationally and beyond our borders. The novel is above all a story about passion — for life, for love, for truth, and, ultimately, for redemption. Many cite the novel as a life-changing book.
I was one of those people. From my first encounter with Fall On Your Knees, I dreamed of bringing this story to the stage. Ann-Marie, my longtime collaborator and, since 2003, my wife, gave me permission to try.
Solnit’s quote also captures the essence of the creation of a new work of theatre. Intensely personal, highly public, and accompanied by financial and reputational precarity, the creation of new theatre in Canada is also a “high-risk business.” And when that new work centres the lives of young women, that risk is amplified.
The stage adaptation of Fall On Your Knees, which I directed and co-created with playwright Hannah Moscovitch, premiered two years ago this month. It took almost 12 years to bring Fall On Your Knees to the stage. The production, presented in two parts, featured an ensemble of 17 brilliant actors and musicians and a creative team of dozens of incredible artists, technicians, and craftspeople. An extensive development process, supported by theatres across the country, culminated in a four-city tour; Fall On Your Knees played to tens of thousands of people in Toronto, Ottawa, Halifax, and London.
I initiated the development of the stage adaptation of Fall On Your Knees in 2010, at a time when stage adaptations of Canadian novels were not common. Neither were there examples of Canadian adaptations that integrated live music outside the musical theatre genre, something I felt was key to tapping into the unique dynamic of Ann-Marie’s novel, which is full of musicians and performers. While Canadian artists are internationally renowned for developing new work, no one in Canada had yet produced an adaptation in two parts, with a total running time of close to six hours. Why Not Theatre’s Mahabharata, a two-part adaptation of a 4,000-year-old Sanskrit poem, and a new take on a poem with a prestigious theatrical track record, would premiere at the Shaw Festival, two months after Fall On Your Knees. Both projects emerged around this time thanks to the game-changing support of the National Creation Fund which made ambitious, large-scale theatre a possibility for Canadian theatres. Mahabharata explores an important and moving spiritual journey. Fall On Your Knees has a complex, plot-driven narrative centring on highly volatile subject matter including a queer central love story, a story that had not been seen at this scale.
Fall On Your Knees was an entirely Canadian production with an unprecedented producing model made up of a partnership among five Canadian theatres — there was no single commissioning or producing theatre. Rather, Jillian Keiley, former artistic director of the Ottawa-based National Arts Centre (NAC), who made it her mission to decentralize Canadian theatre, proposed this model to challenge the idea that “national” work only comes from the nation’s capital. The NAC took leadership of the project, but always within the context of a collaboration with the other theatres, along with my project-based (i.e. no salary, no staff) company, Vita Brevis Arts. This producing model also created a unique opportunity to collaborate with the amazing — and substantial — teams running some of Canada’s largest and most esteemed regional theatres. It was a David and Goliath situation minus the acrimony. If not technically a first, this collaboration was certainly rare.
In 2022, Jillian’s successor Nina Lee Aquino generously embraced the vision, and we emerged from the pandemic with a partnership between the NAC, Canadian Stage in Toronto, the Grand Theatre in London, and Neptune Theatre in Halifax. Rehearsal was an elaborate process, as anyone working in the performing arts during that time can attest. I have never seen such incredible ingenuity (and remarkable patience) as I did in this process as each one of my collaborators adjusted and readjusted to the rapidly changing circumstances; whether it was the quickly shifting health and safety protocols that shaped our day-to-day activities or the breakdown of the global supply chain which impacted set, costumes, and whether or not the actors would have shoes. Like everyone creating theatre at this time, we were building the plane as we were flying it.
In The Infinite Game, Simon Sinek’s recently published book of essays, the author notes that indispensable to any project worth doing is a “Just Cause” — one that motivates those involved to go beyond the call of duty. This is familiar to many of us in the arts. We are keenly aware that powerful theatre can make everyone’s lives better. Theatre allows audiences to feel seen; their joy, sorrow, grief, and delight are validated and enriched by the act of sharing. In theatre, audiences are why we do what we do, they are our raison d’etre. The story of Fall On Your Knees, full of hardship and overcoming and, above all, full of love, made a powerful “Just Cause.” The appetite and enthusiasm of the audiences, who came out of isolation masked, hopeful, and hungry to connect once again in person, provided us with motivation and inspiration. But as Solnit reminds us, the possibility of failure “a little, a lot, miserably, fatally” is always present, even more so given the scale of the project, its subject matter and the volatile global context.
Hundreds of gifted artists, administrators, technicians, and donors made Fall On Your Knees possible. The cast and creative team was overwhelmingly female, non-binary, and/or queer, and racially, geographically, and generationally diverse. For folks on the margins, failure has an outsized impact, affecting more than just the individuals directly involved in a given project. But every production by and about marginalized communities is part of a much larger project of opening our stages to more perspectives. Expanding understanding of difference and building empathy helps to mitigate the high-risk business of life in vulnerable communities.
The response to the production was overwhelming; people leapt to their feet after each and every performance, cheering, embracing. Complete strangers weeping and laughing in each others’ arms. The consistency of the public reaction from city to city was deeply reassuring, and in the following months Fall On Your Knees was honoured with multiple major award nominations and wins, an approbation that was deeply reassuring as well.
Last summer, Andrea Robin Skinner came out about her abuse at the hands of her step-father and notably, about the complicity of her mother, prominent literary figure Alice Munro, in her abuse. This disturbing Canadian story had been “hiding in plain sight” for decades; friends and professional colleagues of Munro, aware of the abuse, were silent. The burden to set the record straight fell, as it so often does, to the survivor.
It’s been 27 years since Fall On Your Knees was published; almost 20 since Tarana Burke initiated the MeToo movement; and only two since the premiere of Fall On Your Knees on stage. It would seem this “high-risk business” of growing up female has no expiry date.
Many, many amazing people championed Fall On Your Knees. Their faith and talent and incredible hard work made the premiere of a complex and important Canadian story, one which centres the lives of young women, not only possible, but creative and for some, healing. At this critical political juncture, as so many forces in the world try to mute and silence women and vulnerable communities, our Canadian stories merit our advocacy and fervent attention.
The kind of support and ongoing financial investment required to make new Canadian work truly magnificent and sustainable is substantial. Commercial investment can elevate a home-grown Canadian story like Come From Away to another level of audience visibility and appreciation. International commissioning at the inception of a project offers an independent Canadian company like Why Not Theatre access to international audiences for important shows like Mahabharata. These kinds of commitments are harder to come by for some stories than others, but stories that show us to ourselves both in shadow and in light are the ones we most need to hear, especially in these turbulent times. They’re the stories that most help us to become the people we hope to be as we pursue the intensely creative task of living.
WRITTEN BY
Alisa Palmer
A creative and dynamic leader, Alisa Palmer has led the development and premiere of innovative and landmark theatre productions for over 25 years. She is currently artistic producer of Vita Brevis Arts, which developed the world premieres of Hamlet-911 (for the Stratford Festival) and Fall On Your Knees, a two-part, music-driven stage adaptation of the iconic Canadian novel, in partnership with the National Arts Centre, Canadian Stage, Neptune Theatre, and the Grand Theatre. As an artistic leader, Alisa has led large- and small-scale organizations through vital transformational change. An award-winning artist, her work is known for its bold design, powerful physicality, and a commitment to the body politic.
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