Voices of the Land

The sound of the wind across a Prairie field, the smell of grass onthe first day of spring, the vocalization of birds in the early morningwoods, the silence of the lake at night interrupted by call of the loon these are the shapes and sounds of the Prairie landscape.Katherine Koller invokes the Prairie setting as a central character ineach of the four plays in Voices of the Land. Serving asupportive and, at other times, antagonistic role, the landscape actsupon the characters, driving and intensifying their transformation. Theland and those who live in intimate terms with it are the focus ofKollers plays. In The Seed Savers, farmers face pressure to purchasegenetically modified seed; a protagonist refuses to sell untilled landfor development in Cowboy Boots and a Corsage; a dying womansees a lake as her final resting place in Abbys Place;and in The Early Worm Club, Millie realizes a deep sense ofbelonging to the Alberta parkland and its birds while searching for hermate. Nature goes beyond mere setting and backdrop in these plays toeffect transformation and resolution on the characters. Ranging fromromantic comedy to drama and from one-act to full-length, the plays inVoices of the Land show western Canadians at the point ofleaving, returning, and renewing against the backdrop of their nativelandscape.