Women of the Fur Trade

Finalist for the 2023 Indigenous Voices Award for Published Prose in English and Winner of the 2018 Toronto Fringe Best New Play Contest

In eighteen hundred and something something, somewhere upon the banks of a Reddish River in Treaty One Territory, three very different women with a preference for twenty-first century slang sit in a fort sharing their views on life, love, and the hot nerd Louis Riel.

Marie-Angelique, a Metis Taurus, is determined to woo Louis (a Metis Libra)—who will be arriving soon—by sending him boldly flirtatious letters. Eugenia, an Ojibwe Sagittarius, brings news of rebellion back to the fort after trading, but isn’t impressed by Louis’s true mediocre nature. And Cecilia, a pregnant British Virgo, is anxiously waiting on her husband’s return from an expedition, but can’t resist pining over the heartthrob Thomas Scott (Irish Capricorn), who is actually the one secretly responding to Marie-Angelique’s letters. This will all go smoothly, right?

Updated after its sold-out run at the Stratford Festival and with a brand-new study guide, this lively historical satire of survival and cultural inheritance shifts perspectives from the male gaze onto women’s power in the past and present through the lens of the rapidly changing world of the Canadian fur trade.

• ISBN: 9780369105158, 036910515X
• Author: Frances Koncan, Ashley Williamson
• Publisher: Playwrights Canada
• Edition: 2nd