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Thursday October 13th to Saturday October 15th @ 7:30pm
Sunday October 16th @ 2pm and 7:30pm
Neptune’s Scotiabank Stage
1593 Argyle Street, Halifax
Tickets $30 general / $25 seniors and students

ESCAPE TO FREEDOM by Nova Scotia composer Sandy Moore based on the life of Mona Parsons (1901–1976) from Wolfville, Nova Scotia.

Escape To Freedom was a staged world premiere performance directed by Sam Rosenthal with assistant director Emily Jewer and Janice Isabel Jackson in the role of Mona Parsons and a terrific cast of top-notch Nova Scotian talent.  Set in the Film Noir cinematic style of the 1940’s, the opera focuses on Mona’s WWII experiences (1941-1945) – her arrest, interrogation, sentencing, deportation, captivity, and escape from Vechta prison in March, 1945, during an allied bombing. After a harrowing journey through war torn Germany to the Dutch Border, she was rescued by Canadian Soldiers. An unlikely war hero, Mona Parsons became one of the first – and few – women to be tried by a Nazi military tribunal in the Netherlands and the only female Canadian civilian to be imprisoned by the Nazis in Occupied Holland, where she was tried and sentenced for execution. After her appeal she was granted life imprisonment at hard labour, then deported to POW camps in Germany. 

Escape To Freedom was  generously funded by the Arts Nova Scotia and the Canada Council for the Arts.