Dear Rita
By Lindsay Kyte
& MIKE ROSS WITH THE ESTATE OF RITA MACNEIL
Dear Rita is an unconventional musical celebration of Cape Breton’s Rita MacNeil. Sure, we think we know her story — Christmas specials, Men of the Deeps, a Tea Room...
But did you know: The RCMP had a file on her because of her controversial women’s rights songs? She played the Riverboat Coffee House with Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and Big Mama Thorton? When record labels wouldn’t sign her because of how she looked, she started her own label — unheard of for a woman in the 1980s? And did you know she is now a revered queer icon — loving who she loved without apology?
Five performers of different identities play Rita at once, for, as Rita once said: "My story is about one person, but it’s something you could put anyone one in.”
