Sharon Pollock (born in Fredericton, New Brunswick 19 Apr 1936) is a Canadian playwright, actor, director, who lives in Calgary, Alberta. She has been Artistic Director of Theatre Calgary (1984), Theatre New Brunswick (1988-1990) and Performance Kitchen & The Garry Theatre, the latter which she herself founded in 1992. In 2007, she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Among these Pollock is also a mother, grandmother and wife. Sharon Pollock is one of Canada’s most notable playwrights, and is a major part of the development of what is known today as Canadian Theatre.
Mary Sharon Chalmers was born in Fredericton New Brunswick on April 19, 1936 to Eloise and Everett Chalmers. Eloise had been a nurse prior to marrying Doctor Everette Chalmers. Sharon was raised in a family and time when appearances and family ties were extremely important; although her mother knew her father was unfaithful to her she refused to leave him. Sharon had a younger brother Peter Chalmers born October 19, 1937. When Sharon was younger her parents often took her an her brother on trips. Trips such as to Banff, Vancouver and through the U.S. Pollock had exposure to large scale American Musical Theatre as they also traveled to New York and was able to see popular musicals such as Annie Get Your Gun, South Pacific, and Oklahoma!
As a young school child, Pollock was not too interested in academics, but enjoyed reading very much and at a young age developed a passion for history. Pollock attended Charlotte Street Primary School and for grade 10 Fredericton High School, where Pollock was the president of the Drama Club. When Pollock was in grade ten she and a friend skipped school for three weeks straight to sneak into the local cinema and watch movies. When they were caught Pollock’s father sent her to King’s Hall, an Anglican private school, because he believed that Pollock could skip school for three weeks and still get good grades, then there is no way her schooling was challenging enough. At this young age Pollock and the same friend, Jane Hickman, created “The Secret Two Club”, for they both shared the desire to be writers, instead of housewives or teachers like the women around them. As well as her interest in drama and writing, Pollock was actively involved in the sports teams at King’s Hall and was the editor of the school magazine.
In Pollock’s later teenage years her family began to fall apart. Her mother felt stifled in the role of housewife and was worn down by her husband’s constant unfaithfulness. Eloise Chalmers committed suicide in 1954 when Pollock was 18. The same year, Pollock enrolled in the general arts program at the University of New Brunswick, where she was also an active member of the Drama Society. It was at UNB she met her future husband Ross Pollock, who was in his fifth year of the environmental forestry program.The young couple eloped, and by 1956 they had their first child, Jennifer. In the same year they moved to Toronto where they lived for the next 8 years. During the course of these 8 years the couple had four more children, Kirk (1957), Melinda (1959), Lisa (1961) and Michele (1963).
During 1962-63 Pollock joined a Theatre group directing a handful of high school kids, Sharon refers to this as “the blind leading the blind”. Ross openly abused Sharon and Sharon admits to attempting to kill him by grinding up the high hormone birth control pills her father sent her and putting them into his food, she was unsuccessful. In 1964 after a violent attack, Pollock left Ross and returned to Fredericton with her five children to be with her family. However her family was not as she had left it. Her father had remarried and had two more children with his new wife.
When Pollock returned to Fredericton, she arrived just in time for the Beaverbrook Playhouse to open, a new theatre in town. Pollock found a job running the Playhouse Box Office. At the Playhouse Pollock, along with some of the members from the UNB Drama Society, formed “The Company of Ten”, which performed 6 shows in the 1964-65 season, then dissolved the following year. (81) During this time Pollock had begun dating fellow actor Michael Ball. In Calgary in 1965, Victor Mitchell had been starting up a Drama Department at the University of Calgary and offered Ball a position starting in January 1966.
Pollock followed Ball west, hoping that this move across Canada would allow her and her children the opportunity to start fresh, to leave the emotional baggage of her family behind her. The 1960s were a booming time in Canadian Theatre. There were regional theatres and festivals popping up all over the country. After their move to Calgary, Pollock and Ball began touring with Mitchell’s theatre group The Prairie Players. They traveled around small towns in Alberta performing in any space they could find. If they were lucky, the troupe would earn $35 a week. Shortly after, in 1967, Pollock joined the MAC 14 Theatre Society, which was the merge of The Musicians and Actors Club of Calgary and a theatre group called Workshop 14. The MAC 14 club was the founding Company of Theatre Calgary. In this same year, Pollock’s sixth child, Amanda, was born to Pollock and Ball. The '60s and early '70s were not easy for Pollock and her family. They lived in barely acceptable living conditions, on an extremely scarce income. In about 1967-68 Pollock began writing plays.
Having worked as an actor for a couple of years, Pollock was becoming frustrated with how even as an actor she rarely felt her voice was heard. Pollock was tired of reproducing others work and longed to hear a Canadian voice on stage. She was trying to fill a gap. The way theatre was those days she felt that no one even wanted to hear a Canadian voice, or a Canadian story. Pollock’s first work was Split Seconds in the Death of, a radio play that was broadcast on CBC on November 22, 1970. These were the days of radio, when a radio play drew a bigger audience than a theatre did. Already in this first script Pollock is pushing the boundaries of the realist narrative. Pollock followed Split Seconds in the Death of with two other Radioplays, 31 for 2 and We to the Gods both in 1971, all for CBC Radio.
Having discovered her passion and talent for writing, Pollock wrote her first full-length play, A Compulsory Option, a dark comedy about three men whose paranoia might be realistic. A Compulsory Option premiered in 1972 and was the first production by Vancouver’s New Play Centre, they play also won an Alberta Culture playwriting competition. In November 1973 Pollock premiered her second full-length play Walsh at Theatre Calgary. In Walsh Pollock dramatizes one of the most disturbing events in Canadian history, that of the injustices done to the Sioux Nation in 1877-1881. In Walsh, The Komagata Maru Incident and One Tiger to a Hill, Pollock examines historic events and tells them in a way that the audience will question the reality between the official story and what is shown on stage.
Throughout her career Pollock continues to use history, that of Canada, such as in ''Whiskey Six Cadenza'' (1983), ''Fair Liberty’s Call'' (1993), or ''End Dream'' (2000); as well as her own personal history in plays such as ''Generations'' (1980), or ''Doc'' (1984) as fuel for her plays.
''Blood Relations'' (1980) is one of Pollock’s most well known and influential plays. ''Blood Relations'' premiered at Theatre Three in Edmonton in March of 1980. Originally written as ''My Name is Lisbeth'' which premiered in 1976 at the Vancouver Playhouse, ''Blood Relations'' is the story of Lizzie Borden, based on historical facts. Lizzie Borden supposedly murdered her father and stepmother. Pollock explores the meaning of the effect that it would have on this community if Lizzie Borden was in fact a murder. While the play does touch on feminist issues, Pollock was criticized for making it less of a feminist play and more of a general political play.
Anne Nothof, ed. Sharon Pollock: Essays on her Work, Guernica Press, 2000.
Craig Stewart Walker, "Sharon Pollock: Besieged Memory," The Buried Astrolabe: Canadian Dramatic Imagination and Western Tradition, McGill-Queen's UP, 2001.
