A Halifax woman found an unproduced play written by her grandfather. It opens next month

CBC News

· Posted: Mar 16, 2025 4:58 PM EDT | Last Updated: 9 minutes ago

Halifax prof Karen Harper ne'er met her grandfather.

But aft discovering an unproduced play helium wrote successful the 1950s successful the attic of her parents' location successful Ontario, she made it her ngo to bring it to the stage. 

Harper's grandparents, Gladys Isabel Mackenzie Harper and Wallace Russell Harper, were physicists who joined portion studying astatine the University of Cambridge successful England successful the precocious 1920s.

While she knew her grandma good — and was profoundly arrogant of her groundbreaking enactment arsenic a pistillate successful the male-dominated tract of physics — her gramps died earlier she got a accidental to know him. 

She knew him mostly arsenic a prof who wrote textbooks, but ne'er arsenic a originative writer. That made the find of his enactment a surprise. 

"I've ever looked up to my grandmother, but present I'm getting to cognize my gramps arsenic well," said Harper.

Play unearthed by father

For galore years, the play collected particulate successful a crawlspace astatine her parents location successful Georgian Bay, Ont.

Harper's begetter rediscovered it arsenic helium geared up to determination into a status home. 

"It was truly important for him to spell done it with maine and to walk connected the knowledge," she said successful an interrogation with Mainstreet Nova Scotia on Wednesday. 

The container included poems, a manuscript and an unproduced play, inspired successful portion by her grandfather's enactment arsenic a physicist. 

The play explores what happens erstwhile a antheral who works astatine a atomic powerfulness presumption and his feline go exposed to radiation.

"It's exploring the information of atomic energy, but besides there's a consciousness of humour astir the play arsenic well," she said. 

Opens adjacent month

After speechmaking the play, and being struck by its prime and resonance, Harper decided to effort to see if anyone would beryllium consenting to equine a production.

"I couldn't judge that my gramps enactment truthful overmuch clip and effort into penning this," she said. "I conscionable felt similar I astir had a work to … transportation done and to spot it performed."

After attempting without occurrence to get thing disconnected the crushed successful Halifax, she reached retired to the University of Cambridge.

She soon recovered a radical of students anxious to instrumentality it on. Approximately 70 years aft it was archetypal written, Not for a Cat: A Play for the Nuclear Age volition premiere determination connected April 5.  

It volition beryllium followed by a treatment by Cambridge academics astir the past and subject down the play.

Harper volition beryllium successful the assemblage that night.