With Glowing Hearts: Academic Page to Popular Stage

An inside look into how and why Elizabeth Quinlan's research into the Mine Mill Ladies Auxiliary movement moved from the academic page to the popular stage, in the form of a new play by playwright Jennifer Wynne Webber.
Elizabeth Quinlan is a professor in the Sociology Department at the University of Saskatchewan (U of S). She brought the idea of a play about the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers' Union Ladies Auxiliaries to playwright Jennifer Wynne Webber, who dove into the research and began developing an original stage play. Soon, a production directed by Drama instructor Julia Jamison was mounted with a cast and crew of U of S students and alumni.
That original production, as chronicled in this video, played in several different locations in Saskatchewan in 2016, including a run at the PotashCorp Fringe Festival in Saskatoon where it was named "Best of the Fest."
Jennifer Wynne Webber later went on to write a full-length version of the play which was produced by Vancouver Island's TheatreOne in 2018, and later presented in New York as a staged reading at Urban Stages, an Obie Award-winning Off Broadway theatre. In 2019, the final version of the play premiered at Dancing Sky Theatre in Saskatchewan. Their production was nominated for seven Saskatoon and Area Theatre Awards (SATAs), ultimately winning for "Outstanding Production." The play also won the SATA for "Outstanding Original Script."
"With Glowing Hearts" was published by Scirocco Drama in 2019, with a foreword written by Elizabeth Quinlan.
The original research and development of the play was supported with grant funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
Archival photographs used with permission. Courtesy: Archives of Ontario (Mike Solski Fonds).