I received this book from Playwrights Canada Press in exchange for an honest review.
Jamaican Canadian screenwriter Julie is working on her passion project, adapting the beloved To Kill a Mockingbird from the perspective of the Finch family’s Black maid, Calpurnia. But Julie has lived a privileged life. Her father, a successful judge, helped get her a successful literary agent and is given space and her encouragement by her father and their Filipina housekeeper, Precy, to write her screenplay. But Julie has writer’s block, and her brother Mark, hoping to impress his father’s lawyer friend and be asked to join his firm, tells Julie that she shouldn’t appropriate and write from a perspective she doesn’t know. This causes Julie to go to great lengths to prove that she can, which will lead to one unforgettable dinner.
I was intrigued by Calpurnia once I read the back of the play, but now having read it I am absolutely blown away by it’s complexity. In Dwyer’s notes at the start of the play she explains that using “drama and comedy and a dash of farce. Calpurnia runs on the razor’s edge of all three” and Dwyer manages to balance these three things perfectly (Dwyer ix-x). The drama and tension of the play is easy to see, Julie is struggling to write her screenplay and is being told by her brother that she is appropriating a voice she has no reason to write from. As a privileged and wealthy Black person who has benefited from her father’s wealth, Julie lives a life very different than that of Calpurnia, but she doesn’t believe this should stop her from writing about Calpurnia as she has also faced prejudice like Calpurnia. As Dwyer also explains in her notes, “[a]lthough the Gordons are high-status, they are not immune from experiencing anti-Black racism and microaggressions” (Dwyer ix).
Dwyer does an excellent job of challenging identity, privilege, and who has the right to tell who’s story. Throughout Calpurnia Julie goes through great-lengths to prove that she can write Calpurnia’s voice, though the lengths she goes ends up hurting her family’s Filipina housekeeper Precy who has worked for the Gordons since Julie and Mark were young children after their mother died. It’s an interesting parallel between Julie wanting to understanding Calpurnia’s identity while completely failing to see how she and her family take up the role as the Finch family while Precy takes on the role of Calpurnia in her own life. It’s through this failure to understand that the comedy and farce comes out, and even that becomes complicated. In the initial run of the show audiences were facing each other with the show being performed in the centre, forcing audience members to see one another’s reactions for what they thought was funny, what they didn’t, etc. Calpurnia is a play that on it’s surface is comedic but at it’s heart is asking audiences to really consider what they are watching and challenge preconceived notions they have about privilege, identity, and people of colour.
As Dwyer notes, “Comedy is hard. Comedy is exhausting. Comedy is rewarding and is an agent of social change” (Dwyer x). I think Calpurnia does an excellent job at challenging audience expectations and really forcing people to think about what they’re watching. It’s a brilliant play, and I hope I get the chance to see it one day!
Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
Pages: 144 pages (paperback)
Source: Playwrights Canada Press (Thank you!)
Genre: Fiction, Play, Contemporary, Comedy
My Rating: ⛤⛤⛤⛤⛤
Summary:
Julie, a young Jamaican Canadian screenwriter, is passionately working on an adaptation of one of the most beloved American novels of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird , telling the story from the perspective of the Finch family’s Black maid, Calpurnia. But within the safe confines of her wealthy father’s home, and besides all the encouragement from their Filipina housekeeper Precy, Julie struggles with writer’s block and numerous distractions as her family prepares for an important dinner party. When her brother challenges her, saying she’s appropriating a culture she doesn’t belong to, she goes to dramatic lengths to prove her point, only to find she has much to learn. Calpurnia is a witty and highly charged look at the complicated entanglements of intersectionality and allyship, exposing motives and biases that are clear as a bell one moment, and drowning in ambiguity the next.
Sarah O'Connor 