WROL (Without Rule of Law)

By Michaela Jeffery

Convinced the world at large can’t be trusted to prioritize the well-being of adolescent girls in the event of a cataclysmic event (or just in general), a determined troupe of preteen “doomers” commit to preparing for survival in the post-collapse society they anticipate inheriting.

When Maureen, Jo, Sarah, Vic, and Robbie sneak out at night to investigate an ominous hidden lair in the woods, they believe they have stumbled onto proof of what happened to a mysterious local cult that vanished over a decade ago. As they search for vital clues, examining small bones and dusty cans of food for signs of life, they fight to be understood in a world that seems to reject them. What they discover changes everything—eighth grade will never be the same.

Part Judy Blume, part Rambo, this darkly comic coming-of-age story for complicated times is for any young woman who has ever been told that she is “too much,” or that what she fears is illegitimate, or that what she has to say is less important than keeping the peace.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
• Release date: Jun 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9780369102409

Michaela Jeffery

Michaela Jeffery is an award-winning Calgary-based playwright and graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada. Selected writing credits include WROL (Without Rule of Law), Wolf on the Ringstrasse, The Listening Room, Godhead, and Always. She was a finalist for the Alberta Playwrights' Network 2019 Alberta Playwriting Competition and a past finalist of the Playwrights Guild of Canada’s RBC Emerging Playwright Award. She was commissioned by Vertigo Theatre to write The Extractionist—a brand new, feminist thriller.

Book preview

WROL

(Without Rule of Law)

Michaela Jeffery

Playwrights Canada Press

Toronto

Copyright

WROL (Without Rule of Law) © Copyright 2021 by Michaela Jeffery

I am One Voice © Copyright Don Eaton

First edition: June 2021

Jacket design by Leah Renihan

Author photo © Maxime Côté

Playwrights Canada Press

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No part of this book may be reproduced, downloaded, or used in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for excerpts in a review or by a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca.

For professional or amateur production rights, please contact:

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: WROL : without rule of law : a play / Michaela Jeffery.

Other titles: Without rule of law

Names: Jeffery, Michaela, author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210223685 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210223715

| ISBN 9780369102386 (softcover) | ISBN 9780369102393 (PDF)

| ISBN 9780369102409 (HTML)

Classification: LCC PS8619.E44445 W76 2021 | DDC C812/.6—dc23

Playwrights Canada Press operates on Mississaugas of the Credit, Wendat, Anishinaabe, Métis, and Haudenosaunee land. It always was and always will be Indigenous land.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council (OAC), Ontario Creates, and the Government of Canada for our publishing activities.

Logo: Canada Council for the Arts.Logo: Government of Canada.Logo: Ontario Creates.Logo: Ontario Arts Council.

Dedication

For Laurel—

Let’s keep going.

Radical Friends

Laurel Green

Be prepared is the motto of a certain guiding institution that I was a member of for more than a decade. From little brown dresses with itchy tights to blue-and-white striped uniforms, I was a scarf-tying, sash-wearing, singer of campfire songs who preferred canoeing and community organizing over badge-stitching and babysitting. I was a kid who moved a lot, and with each new town came a new troop, a new place to try and belong. I learned how to build a snow shelter in -40° winters, lead a mass evacuation in a hurricane, perform CPR, bandage a wound, tell a terrifying ghost story, and sleep outside under the stars. But I also remember struggling to earn badges awarded for hostessing, elocution, makeup, hairstyling, housekeeping, and how to set a table. Survival skills came alongside a host of gendered expectations. As a young woman, achieving these seemed to be rewarded disproportionally more than asking tough questions, asserting myself, and advocating for change. So what were we preparing for?

When playwright Michaela Jeffery first spoke to me about WROL (Without Rule of Law), she asked, What if the characters in this story—the only voices heard on stage—are twelve-year-old girls? We swapped stories from our own memories of grade eight: I led a boycott of corporate advertising in my middle-school hallways, directed my first play, and started a newspaper. Michaela, a self-described huge weirdo with an unearned level of personal conviction, took helpful neighbourhood cat censuses, memorized poetry in elvish, and signed her school assignments with a personalized wax seal. Looking back, we were creative, fearless, determined, and undeniably ourselves. I wonder how those girls would navigate the increasingly complex and precarious world we’re living in now. What is the future they would want us to fight for today?

WROL offers a ferociously articulate, crushingly funny, and idiosyncratically heart-forward take on the absolute impossibility of remaining seen and not heard in the face of crisis. With startling prescience, the playwright asserts a new narrative, wherein there’s power in preparedness, strength in speaking out, and action is an adventure best undertaken with friends. The characters in this play, Jo, Maureen, Sarah, Vic, and Robbie—ages twelve and thirteen—run a gamut of attributes and anxieties; they are curious, hopeful, angry, and unafraid. Over the course of the play, they take a collective leap of imagination with an unwavering acceptance of each other, based on a fervent belief that, together, we can do better. WROL reveals much about what we (now the grown-ups) have come to accept as inevitable, and what we have decided is simply out of our control to change. It draws attention to the critical contemporary paradox of looking around when a crisis breaks to see who’s in charge, and never quite believing that it is you.

Boldly theatrical and convention-defying, WROL features exceptional roles for actors, scenes of spitfire dialogue, and many audition-worthy monologues. The play offers tremendously exciting challenges for its creative team. It makes audiences laugh with recognition; it fills us with compassion, energizes, holds us accountable, and invites us to be part of the adventure. I look forward to many productions of this play, each as innovative and distinct as the people behind them. A new play is a deep investment, a risky journey, a