Pélagie is a Canadian epic

Epic theatre

Epic theatre was a theatrical movement arising in the early to mid-20th century from the theories and practice of a number of theatre practitioners, including Erwin Piscator, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vsevolod Meyerhold and, most famously, Bertolt Brecht...

 musical

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 written by Allen Cole and Vincent de Tourdonnet

Vincent de Tourdonnet

Vincent de Tourdonnet is one of Canada’s foremost writers of lyrics and books for the musical theatre. He has co-created several large-scale, epic musicals, as well as intimate, cabaret-style musicals...

, based on the 1979 novel Pélagie-la-Charette by Acadian

Acadian

The Acadians are the descendants of the 17th-century French colonists who settled in Acadia . Acadia was a colony of New France...

 writer Antonine Maillet

Antonine Maillet

Antonine Maillet, is an Acadian novelist, playwright, and scholar. She was born in Bouctouche, New Brunswick and lives in Montreal, Quebec....

, about the Acadian widow Pélagie LeBlanc. In the late 1770s, LeBlanc led her Acadian people back to Grand Pré from the American South, where they had been deported in 1755.

The play was first produced in 2004 by CanStage in Toronto and the National Arts Centre

National Arts Centre

The National Arts Centre is a centre for the performing arts located in Ottawa, Ontario, between Elgin Street and the Rideau Canal...

 in Ottawa, and starred Susan Gilmour as Pélagie and Rejean Cournoyer

Rejean Cournoyer

Réjean Cournoyer is a Canadian actor and singer, and was raised in a bilingual, Mormon home. After graduating from Mount Saint Vincent University with a degree in public relations, and leaving Mormonism, he began working at the Charlottetown Festival, then made his way to Toronto in 1995 to...

 as Joseph Beausoleil.

A second production, in English and French, starring Marie Denise Pelletier

Marie Denise Pelletier

-External links:* *...

 and Rejean Cournoyer

Rejean Cournoyer

Réjean Cournoyer is a Canadian actor and singer, and was raised in a bilingual, Mormon home. After graduating from Mount Saint Vincent University with a degree in public relations, and leaving Mormonism, he began working at the Charlottetown Festival, then made his way to Toronto in 1995 to...

toured Canada's Maritime provinces, ended in Quebec in 2005.