Redpatch - by Sean Harris Oliver & Raes Calvert (Paperback)

About the Book

Private Jonathan Woodrow is a young Indigenous soldier fighting on the Western Front during World War I. Thanks to his experience in hunting and wilderness survival, he quickly becomes one of the 1st Canadian Division's most feared trench raiders. But as the war and the fighting stretch on with no end in sight, Woodrow begins to realize that he will never go home again.

Book Synopsis

This is the story of a Métis soldier fighting for Canada on the Western Front of Europe during World War I. Vancouver 1914: a young Indigenous man named Jonathon Woodrow, desperate to prove himself as a warrior, enlists to fight in the Canadian army. Relying on his experience in hunting and wilderness survival, Private Woodrow quickly becomes one of the most feared trench raiders in the 1st Canadian Division. But as the war stretches on, with no end to the fighting in sight, Woodrow begins to realize that he will never go home again.

A 2017 finalist for the Playwright Guild of Canada's prestigious Carol Bolt Award for Playwrights, Redpatch focuses on how First Nations soldiers and communities contributed to Canada's involvement in the First World War.

Review Quotes

"Redpatch is both personal yet universal and borderline mythological. Using dance, myth and mask, Calvert and Oliver have succeeded in asking a question about identity on a dual scale."
--Vancouver Presents

About the Author

Sean Harris Oliver is a Canadian playwright, director, performer, and filmmaker. His work has appeared throughout Canada and the US in a variety of arts festivals, public readings, and theatre productions. Since 2010 Sean has written, performed, and directed plays with Hardline Productions, a Vancouver-based theatre production company that he co-founded with Raes Calvert and Genevieve Fleming. The company converted an office space in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver into a 30-seat black box theatre where they produced numerous artistic works, nightclub parties, and workshops for emerging artists. Sean's other plays include: Eight Seconds, Bright Blue Future, The Fighting Season and The Soldier's Wife. Sean is a graduate of Queen's University and Studio 58. Raes Calvert is a Métis theatre artist from Vancouver. He and fellow writer Sean Harris Oliver began their theatre company Hardline Productions in 2010 and have been working, creating, and producing together ever since. Raes is proud of his Indigenous heritage, which originally comes from the Nootka Sound region of Vancouver Island. He has performed nationally and internationally with a number of Canadian theatre companies and is a three-time nominee and one-time recipient of a Jessie Richardson Theatre Award. Last year Raes received a REVEAL Indigenous Arts Award from the Hnatysyn Foundation. Raes has written or co-written: Cativo, Coercion (Neanderthal Festival) Our Neighbourhood (Hive 2: the new bees) with Hardline Productions, and his solo show: The World in HDHD. Raes is a graduate of the Studio 58 professional actor training program at Langara College. Writing and creating Redpatch has been one of the most rewarding and fulfilling journeys of his life and career. Through the development process, he has come to know and view himself and his history from a completely new perspective.