A story of the ill-fated romance between a wandering musician-social-idealist and a Cape Breton coal miner’s daughter, whose dreams are reawakened by their passion. The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum is a play in which the all-consuming brightness of dreams and memory are overshadowed by absentee greed, callousness and exploitation. It is a tragedy that is hard as nails and completely unsentimental, yet nonetheless full of love and humour.

Cast of two women and three men.

Wendy Lill
Wendy Lill has not only written extensively for radio, magazines, film, television and the stage, but has also been active in national politics. In 1979, while with CBC Radio in Winnipeg, Lill wrote her first play, On the Line, to dramatize the plight of striking Winnipeg garment industry workers. Since then, her plays have gone on to examine the Canadian women’s suffrage movement (The Fighting Days); aboriginal-white relations (The Occupation of Heather Rose, Sisters); pedophilia and mass hysteria (All Fall Down); the slashing of social programs (Corker); and the dangerous lives of coal miners in her adopted province of Nova Scotia (The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum).

Wendy Lill's profile page

• Short-listed, Governor General's Literary Award for Drama

“… as real as the coal.”
– Halifax Chronicle Herald

“… bittersweet magic realism leavened by the ribald banter between the characters”
– Halifax Daily News

“What an emotional roller coaster ride! Playwright Wendy Lill has touched every possible nerve in her latest offering, The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum.” – Halifax Mail Star

“… a tender, romantic triumph over the genre …” – Eye Weekly

“Lill has translated a novel – and, moreover, a novel that is essentially an intense, first-person monologue – into a captivating dramatic form, with engaging dialogue, conflict between characters, and enough thoughts shared directly with the audience to retain the flavor of the original.” – Canadian Book Review Annual