Serving Elizabeth

Serving Elizabeth begins in Kenya in 1952, during the fateful royal visit of Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh. Mercy, a restaurant owner, is approached to cook for the royal couple. Though she could use the money, she is a staunch anti-monarchist. She vows to stick to her principles, but her daughter, Faith, keeps trying to convince her to take the job. In London in 2015, in the production offices of a series about Queen Elizabeth, a Kenyan-Canadian film student, Tia, serves as an intern on the project. It’s a perfect fit for her as she has been a fan of princesses her whole life. But when she reads the Kenya episode, she starts to understand that fairy tales and real life are very different things. Serving Elizabeth is a funny, fresh, and topical play about colonialism, monarchy, and who is serving whom -- or what.

Marcia Johnson is a playwright and actor based in Toronto. Her plays include Binti’s Journey, an adaptation of The Heaven Shop by Deborah Ellis; Courting Johanna (Scirocco Drama, 2009) based on Alice Munro’s Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, and Late. Her plays have been performed by the Blyth Festival, Obsidian Theatre Company, Theatre Direct Canada, Manitoba Theatre for Young People, Black Theatre Workshop, Western Canadian Theatre Company, and more. My Mother’s Ring, a short opera for which she wrote the libretto with composer Stephen A. Taylor, was nominated for a 2009 Dora Mavor Moore Award. Their second collaboration, Paradises Lost, based on the Ursula K. Le Guin novella, had excerpted concert performances by Third Angle Ensemble in Portland, Oregon and at The Gershwin Hotel in New York. Marcia Johnson is a core member of Got Your Back Canada and is a juror/dramaturg for Ergo Pink Fest, supporting, developing and showcasing the works of women and playwrights of marginalized genders.