Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
“History has as much to do with imagination as anything else.”
In the early 1600s, a modest crew of male scholars and clergymen are working for King James to produce a new English translation of the Bible that will bring unity through God’s words. Their idiosyncratic and interpersonal conflicts will be embedded in one of the most influential texts in history, indelibly shaping the English language and Christian thought for centuries to come. Fast-forward to the present day where an all-female theatre troupe is creating a play about those translators—and they have more than a few notes.
A witty and fascinating interrogation of translation in all its forms, Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman’s The King James Bible Play brilliantly examines the personal and political forces within authorship and authority. Musing on the mysteries of creation itself, this gripping drama draws a parallel between past and present, reckoning with what we inherit and what we choose to believe.
Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. At fifteen her mother tragically died and she decided the only thing to do was write a play and act in it. This was unhinged. It did not help her grief but it did turn her into a writer. Winner of the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play, the Voaden Prize, and the K.M. Hunter Artist Award, Charlotte’s writing has also been nominated twice for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Her work has been staged and commissioned by the most prestigious theatres in Canada, including the Stratford Festival, the National Arts Centre, the Citadel Theatre, Factory Theatre, Talk Is Free Theatre, the Coal Mine Theatre, and Tarragon Theatre. Selected theatre credits include Guarded Girls, Scratch, Twisted with Joseph Jomo Pierre, Sudden Death, Want Now, Madame Minister, Almost a Full Moon with Hawksley Workman, The King James Bible Play, and Haunted House.