How Emma Donoghue's debut musical stands up for immigrants both past and present
The Wind Coming Over The Sea is based on the true story of Henry and Jane Johnson, a young married couple who left Ireland in the 1840s in search of a better life. In her research, Donoghue discovered seven letters the Johnsons had written to each other, which served as her inspiration.
"The love between them just burns off the pages," Donoghue says in an interview with Q 's Tom Power. "In some cases, a single letter would take months to write. They're dirty and they're tattered. And I can tell you, there's no source of all the sources I've used in my historical writing that moves me as much as this little handful of letters."
WATCH | How an Irish famine footnote inspired Emma Donoghue's new musical:
Donoghue is no stranger to immigration herself — she's emigrated to two countries in her life: first England and later Canada. She decided to tell the story of the Johnsons as a musical using traditional Irish folk songs because she says one of the most important things immigrants bring with them is their culture.
The Wind Coming Over The Sea sheds light on the hope, courage and hardship the Johnsons as well as many other immigrants have experienced on their journey to a new land.
With immigration frequently in the headlines right now, Donoghue knew from the onset that this production would be "a very political play to do in 2025," despite it being set nearly 200 years ago.
"At every point, I was trying to find a timeless quality to a story of immigration because Lord knows it's relevant to today," Donoghue says. "There are several scenes where Henry meets vicious hostility from both Americans and Canadians about immigrants as germ-spreaders, as job-stealers, as undercutters of wages, as, you know, the alien and the other. And we see this in every newspaper today, so I felt it was crucial to make this play stand up and sort of speak for immigrants then and now."
You can catch The Wind Coming Over The Sea at the Blyth Festival in Blyth, Ont., where it's running until Aug. 12.
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