Colony of Unrequited Dreams opens tonight in St. John's

Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland is marking its 20th anniversary by launching one of its biggest productions to date tonight at the Arts and Culture Centre in St. John's.

The Colony of Unrequited Dreams is an adaptation of Wayne Johnston’s epic 1998 bestseller, which presents a fictional take on former premier Joey Smallwood and the years leading up to Confederation with Canada. 

The play features a cast of 10 actors, who juggle the roles of nearly 40 characters, said artistic director Robert Chafe.

The actors will be busy, moving the sets as they go, with the audience intimately engaged in the action.

"We've said all along that theatre works best when the audience, rather than sitting passively, they have to be part of this — they have to use their imagination," said Chafe.

The production, directed by Jillian Keiley, has been six years in the making.

The props are as minimal as the Newfoundland barrens themselves, including plenty of artificial snow and a very unique cloud which is a "beautiful morphous shape," said Chafe.

"It vaguely looks like a mountain range, it looks like a cloud, it looks like water at one point. So, like the snow and clouds, it really looks like Newfoundland," he said.

The play centres around Smallwood, a very divisive character in Newfoundland and Labrador's history. 

There's arguably no more suitable subject of historical drama than the man who steered the province into Confederation with Canada, and later became the first premier. He's regarded by some as part saint; a rogue by others.

"A young idealistic man, just back from New York and the socialist party there, coming back to Newfoundland and being torn between the ambition to help his people and this place and the personal ambition to crawl himself from under the boots he's always been under," Chafe said.

The play runs until Saturday.