The Unplugging

Winner of the Jessie Richardson Theatre Award for Outstanding Original Script.

In an instant, electricity all over the world stops flowing, and humanity is left in the dark. Bern and Elena, exiled from their village for being too old to bear children, trudge across the desolate, post-apocalyptic ruin. Relying upon traditional wisdom for their survival, they retreat from the remains of civilization to a frozen wooded landscape where they attempt to carry on after the end of the world. When a charismatic stranger from the village arrives seeking their aid, Bern and Elena must decide whether they will use their knowledge of the past to give the society that rejected them a chance at a future.

Yvette Nolan is a playwright, dramaturg, and director. Her plays include BLADE, Job’s Wife, Video, Annie Mae’s Movement, Scattering Jake, Donne In, and What Befalls the Earth. She is the editor of Beyond the Pale and co-editor, with Donna-Michelle St. Bernard, of Refractions: Solo. She has been the writer-in-residence at Brandon University, Mount Royal College, and the Saskatoon Public Library, as well as playwright-in-residence at the National Arts Centre. She is a past president of Playwrights Union of Canada and of Playwrights Canada Press. Born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan to an Algonquin mother and an Irish immigrant father, raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, she lived in the Yukon and Nova Scotia before moving to Toronto to take the helm at Native Earth Performing Arts where she served from 2003-2011.