Shorelines by Mishka Lavigne

A non-linear portrayal of family and community in a world ravaged by climate change

Image | Shorelines by Mishka Lavigne

Caption: (From Playwrights Canada Press)

A small military-occupied community sits, waiting, parched of natural water while nearby levees hold the rising global shoreline. Seventeen-year-old twins Alix and Evan pass the time in an empty, abandoned pool with what they are able to scavenge from the abandoned houses, while government official Portia returns to familiar places, her past colliding with the present. The planned evacuation notice that eventually reaches all cities has finally come, but the twins learn that survival is not guaranteed. As they rush to reach their grandmother, a retired journalist now living with dementia, her snippets of memories flow like humanity's record player, skipping tracks before the final flood.
A non-linear poetic play that acts like a postcard from the future, Shorelines is about family and community in a world ravaged by climate change. It also speaks to the inevitable inequality of disaster response and how poorer communities are disproportionately affected by it. Mishka Lavigne's message within her lyrical piece is urgent and multi-dimensional: it is a reminder that all things are connected and hope can only lie in the relationships we form with the people around us. (From Playwrights Canada Press)
Mishka Lavigne is a playwright, screenwriter, and literary translator. She received the 2019 Governor General's Literary Award for Drama (French) for her play Havre. Her play Copeaux, a movement-based poetic creation piece with director Éric Perron, premiered in Ottawa in March 2020 and was also awarded the Governor General's Literary Award for Drama in 2021 as well as the Prix littéraire Jacques-Poirier. Albumen, her first play written in English, received the Prix Rideau Award for Outstanding New Creation in 2019 and the QWF Playwriting Prize in 2020. She is based in Ottawa/Gatineau.