Unity (1918)

In the fall of 1918, a world ravaged by four years of war was suddenly hit by a mysterious and deadly plague—the “spanish Flu.” The illness struck not only the young and the elderly, but also people in the prime of their lives, advancing rapidly toward mortality in its victims. This phenomenon in effect brought the terror, the panic, the horror and the sense of helplessness of the Great War home with the returning soldiers—more people died of this epidemic than had been killed in battle throughout the armed conflict.

As fear of the dreaded flu begins to fill the town of Unity with paranoia, drastic measures are taken. The town is quarantined in an attempt to keep the illness out. Trains are forbidden to stop, no one can enter, and the borders are sealed. Mail from overseas, feared to be carrying the deadly virus, is gathered and then burned. But when the disease descends upon the town despite their precautions, the citizens begin to turn on each other as they attempt to find a scapegoat for the crisis.

Very little has been written about this worldwide calamity which, more than the war itself, destroyed forever the genteel and naive presumptions of European colonial society at the beginning of the twentieth century. Kevin Kerr offers audiences not only an epic chronicle of this forgotten chapter of Canadian history, but a chilling preview of the beginnings of our own new century.

The play is a gothic romance, filled with dark comedy and the desperate embrace of life at the edge of death.

AUTHOR

Kevin Kerr

Kevin Kerr is playwright and founding member of Vancouver’s Electric Company Theatre, with whom he’s co-written numerous plays including The Wake, The Score, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, Flop, The Fall, and Brilliant! The Blinding Enlightenment of Nikola Tesla. In 2002 he received the Governor General’s Literary Award for his play Unity (1918), which has been produced across Canada as well as in the United States and Australia. In 2005 he co-wrote the feature-length screen adaptation of Electric Company’s The Score for Screen Siren Pictures and CBC Television. Other works include Studies in Motion (Electric Company Theatre) and Skydive (Realwheels). At present he is writing a stage adaptation of Pierre Berton’s children’s classic “The Secret World of Og” for Vancouver’s Carousel Theatre. For Electric Company he’s co-directed Brilliant!, The Wake, and Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, and in 2008 he directed Jonathon Young’s Palace Grand, presented at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. Kevin was Lee Playwright in Residence at the University of Alberta in Edmonton from 2007 to 2010. He returned to Electric Company Theatre in 2011 as Artistic Director.

Reviews

“Kerr’s splendid new creation [ Unity (1918) ] is a work of powerful and moving familiarity, a kind of secular liturgy that celebrates love, sex, death and the sorrowful mysteries of war and plague. It’s also painfully funny.”
—Globe & Mail

“Unity (1918) is written with an assuredness that easily mixes profundity with hearty laughs … Kerr shows a gift for creating genuinely ordinary people who can expand on great thoughts even as they trip over their own flaws.”
—Vancouver Sun

“In Kerr’s beautifully written and often very funny play … the story is told of ordinary people united and transformed in facing the fear of the unknown.”— Calgary Herald

“The play is a hard go, but worth it for the stellar writing and mesmerizing horror of being exposed to this under-told chapter in our history.”— Saskatoon Star Phoenix

“an ‘affecting period piece’”
—Huffington Post