Back Talk

Plays of Black Experience

Louise Delisle

”To read Delisle’s plays is to be sat right sown on the front stoop or round the kitchen table of Africadian fact. She puts us there, centre stage, right in the midst of the  country-and-town reality of The People philosophizin, drinkin. singin, prayin, quiltin,laughin, gamblin, churchgoin, runnin, braidin hair, lovin, workin, fightin, talkin back to cops an such, and just keepin on keepin on. Delisle’s sociology is exactly who we be, so doncha get upset; her vision of our history is what we need to know, so pay attention. Ya gonna forget the Town of Shelburne passed a law “forbidding negro dances and frolics” in 1789? Naw, I say, naw…” —George Elliott Clarke, Poet & E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature, University of Toronto

Contents

• Foreword: A Dramatic Entrance (George Elliott Clarke)
• The Red Dress
• A Slave’s Day in Court
• The Days of Evan
• That’s Just How it Goes
• Winnie’s Elephant
• We’re Here But a Short Time
• Acknowledgements

About the Author

Louise Delisle, the eldest of a family of seven children, was born and raised in Shelburne, Nova Scotia. She attended Shelburne Regional High, where she made some of her lifelong friends, and later pursued a nursing career. Growing up in Shelburne, she became involved in theatre when she joined a small acting group called the Dancing Beggars. She is the founder and president of the Black Pioneers Acting Troupe. Louise has been writing plays for the Black Pioneers for a number of years.