But if you came to Building Houses with those sorts of expectations (frankly, any expectations), you missed a pretty big clue that this show will be anything but predictable. Look closer. Do you see it? It’s right there on the poster: the name of the playwright. 

Building Houses is the latest co-production of Theatre Newfoundland Labrador and Poverty Cove Theatre Company’s Megan Gail Coles. Set in 1828, when the island was still a British Colony, the play is a braid of narratives about identity, where Coles nimbly twists up facts with historical fiction until the audience can’t be sure what to believe. 

With well over a decade of groundbreaking work behind her, Coles has deservedly earned her reputation as a fearless storyteller. No matter her medium, she refuses to allow her audiences to remain passive; there is always an ask of them. In Building Houses, Coles practically snatches the viewer by the lapels, provoking them into reconsidering everything they believe (and certainly everything they’ve been taught) about the lineage of Newfoundland’s first people. 

The writing here is sharp, its dialogue anchored by dark humour (it’s Coles, after all). But where the show sings is in how effectively it plays with audience expectations. Coles knows what we know, and uses that knowledge to help usher us towards moments of discovery. Put another way, we are Elmer Fudd, Coles is Bugs Bunny, and she can make us pay for thinking we knew her next move.

Longtime Coles collaborator Emma Tibaldo directs, and through her staging, the connections between characters are tightened. The five actors weave through each other’s spaces, and transitions happen with urgency, with one scene beginning before the previous has faded out. And much like Coles, Tibaldo also has a way of catching audiences off guard. Oh, is that what you think that prop is for? Is that all the set can do? Say, who put this cork inside the barrel of my wabbit hunting gun?

Tibaldo also allows room for each of the five performers to shine. Shanawdithit (Billie Wicks) reverberates in a sparing, never timid performance. Indigenous guide Jack (Gordon Patrick White) is dynamic and complex despite his unthinkable actions. Teenage Suzanna (Violet Cummings) leads with frustrating obstinacy, only to reveal a soul broken by loss. Then there’s Hosana (Forteau’s Taylor Rae Groves) who pulls off the unbelievable, volleying from salt-of-the-earth gran who’s all smiles and lassy bread until a terrifying, grip-your-seat-cushion turn. Finally, explorer Collum (Colin Furlong) might be the reason the Myra Bennett Centre has fixed seating, as audience members would otherwise be hurling their chairs at the stage (a compliment for a villain).

Building Houses is not a show to see once, say, “Oh, that was nice,” then move along. It’s going to stick with you. The morning after the premiere, I was in a Gros Morne field, listening as a pair of Parks Canada employees exchanged differing accounts of how an invasive species came to the island. I was still thinking about Building Houses, unable to keep myself from wondering whether narratives can also be invasive in their own way. If so, how should we contend with them? Leave them be and hope they don’t do too much damage? Maybe. Or maybe, as Coles seems to be suggesting, it’s time we start digging them up, roots and all.

Josh Goudie is a writer living in St. John’s, NL. His three children’s books have been published by Breakwater Books, and his stories for bigger kids have received the Percy Janes First Novel Award, the Short Grain Prize, and a pair of Riddle Fence contest awards for fiction.