{"id":12468,"date":"2016-09-21T09:00:38","date_gmt":"2016-09-21T16:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=12468"},"modified":"2016-09-30T11:41:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-30T18:41:00","slug":"the-last-wife-tackles-issues-of-family-and-patriarchy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2016\/09\/21\/the-last-wife-tackles-issues-of-family-and-patriarchy\/","title":{"rendered":"The Last Wife<\/em> tackles issues of family and patriarchy"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s no secret that Henry VIII liked to chop off heads. It\u2019s also no secret that the Tudor period in English history was a time of education and culture, largely due to the influx of plays and playwrights, and the general interest in theater. The Last Wife is a combination of the two: it\u2019s a play about Henry VIII\u2019s last wife, Katherine Parr.<\/p>\n

Parr\u2019s life is constantly on the line due to her devotion to the education of Henry\u2019s daughters as well as secret meetings with his ex brother-in-law. The Last Wife director Esther Jun says that the play dives into some deep family themes.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Parr] passed her knowledge onto his daughter Mary, but more importantly, onto Elizabeth,\u201d says Jun, \u201cand that\u2019s sort of what a lot of the play is about\u2014the legacy that we pass along to our children.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Last Wife<\/em> director Esther Jun says the play deals with many subjects (photo provided).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Set in modern times, the play hopes to successfully tackle some current-day issues as well as tell an entertaining story, with some comic relief, but Jun says The Last Wife takes on some serious subjects as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a really powerful look at patriarchy, sexual politics, and women\u2019s rights,\u201d she says. \u201cAt the heart of it, it\u2019s a woman in a man\u2019s world and how she manoeuvred herself to stand up for her own rights and the rights of the other females around her and how her legacy echoed through time. It\u2019s really sad that I don\u2019t think the play seems archaic in any way. We are still dealing with a patriarchal society.\u201d<\/p>\n

As one of the first published female authors in England, Parr lived in a dangerous world and produced some incredible work, which influenced more than just her daughters.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a historical play, but it\u2019s contemporary and it\u2019s very domestic,\u201d says Jun. \u201cIt\u2019s really about a man and a woman, and marriage, and children.\u201d<\/p>\n

When we view kings and queens, we see, well, kings and queens: people who are richer, who are more powerful, and who have had a longer and more prominent effect on the world than we realize we have done ourselves. But Jun says that\u2019s not always the case, and The Last Wife brings that point home.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really about the everyday lives of these people,\u201d she says. \u201cThey\u2019re just like us. They have just as many fights and squabbles with their partners as anybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Last Wife
\n<\/i>Until October 16
\n$20 to $53\u00a0(Camosun students 25 percent off), The Belfry Theatre
\nbelfry.bc.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s no secret that Henry VIII liked to chop off heads. It\u2019s also no secret that the Tudor period in English history was a time of education and culture, largely due to the influx of plays and playwrights, and the general interest in theater. The Last Wife is a combination of the two: it\u2019s a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12469,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,171],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-september-21-2016"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12468"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12471,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12468\/revisions\/12471"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}