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February 2012

Tuesday February 7, 2012
Bryden MacDonald's Whale Riding Weather at the Sex Festival

Wednesday February 8, 2012
Divisadero - Michael Ondaatje and Daniel Brooks - Theatre Passe Muraille

Thursday February 9, 2012
bill bissett: problematics - UFV

Thursday February 9, 2012
The Long Poem Workshop - Jay MillAr

Thursday February 9, 2012
Problem Child & The End of Civilization - George F. Walker - Telus Studio Theatre

Thursday February 9, 2012
Moving Along - Chris Craddock - Roxy Theatre

Wednesday February 15, 2012
Write Here Readers Series - North Island College

Thursday February 16, 2012
2012 Gabriola Poetry Festival

Friday February 17, 2012
House - Daniel MacIvor - The ARTS Project Theatre

Saturday February 18, 2012
HOME FRONT, a reading series - Sharon Thesen

Thursday February 23, 2012
Talking Stick Festival presents In a World Created by a Drunken God

Friday February 24, 2012
Galiano Literary Festival - 2012

Saturday February 25, 2012
red diva projects - Marie Clements, Michelle St. John, Women from DTES Centre

Tuesday February 28, 2012
The Leisure Society - Trafalgar Studios - UK

March 2012

Thursday March 1, 2012
Fred Wah - Versefest in Ottawa

Thursday March 1, 2012
Gordon - Morris Panych - Revue Stage

Thursday March 1, 2012
Where the Blood Mixes - Kevin Loring - Remai Arts Centre

Friday March 9, 2012
Ms Thing - Vancouver Women in Film Festival - Embracing the Darkness

Saturday March 10, 2012
How To Write A Poem For The Queen: a workshop with the Parliamentary Poet Laureate

Wednesday March 21, 2012
BellaLuna's Fresco - Lucia Frangione - Shadbolt Centre and Cultch

Friday March 23, 2012
Words on the Water - Campbell River Writer's Festival 2012

April 2012

Friday April 13, 2012
Bordertown Cafe - Kelly Rebar - Toledo Repertoire Theatre

Thursday April 19, 2012
Down Dangerous Passes Road - Michel Marc Bouchard - Encore Theatre

Tuesday April 24, 2012
The Real World? - Michel Tremblay -Tarragon Theatre

Monday April 30, 2012
M.A.C. Farrant at Banff Centre in 2012
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15 Seconds

By François Archambault

A young female advertising copy writer, her pro-sports-fan ex-boyfriend, a Gen-X welfare-bum loser and his brother with cerebral palsy. Cast of 1 woman and 3 men.



1949
1949

By David French

Newfoundland joins Confederation in the continuing saga of the Mercer family. Cast of 6 women, 6 men and 2 male children.



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2000

By Joan MacLeod

The relationships of the young, the aging and the middle-aged, and between urban life and nature at the end of the millennium. Cast of 3 women and 2 men.



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400 Kilometres

By Drew Hayden Taylor

The third play in Taylor’s hilarious and heart-wrenching identity-politics trilogy. Janice Wirth, an urban professional who has discovered her roots as the Ojibway orphan Grace Wabung, is pregnant and must come to grips with the question of her true identity. Cast of 3 women and 2 men.



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7 Stories

By Morris Panych

In this fast-paced, sophisticated and hilarious play, a man’s contemplation of suicide leads to a charming and surprising ending. Cast of 2 women and 3 men.



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A Line in the Sand

By Guillermo Verdecchia & Marcus Youssef

A young Palestinian is befriended, then tortured and murdered by Canadian soldiers during Operation Desert Storm. Cast of 3 to 5 men.



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Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre

By Larry Tremblay

Mark Killman—a feared but much admired director—hires two actors to play Laurel and Hardy in a re-enactment of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, while he himself plays the iconic role of the target as a wax figure. Absurd, hilarious and haunting.



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Adrift

By Marcus Youssef

In this play inspired by the novel Adrift on the Nile, by Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, a group of urban Egyptian hipsters engages in debates about secularism and “fundamentalism” with tragic consequences.” Cast of 4 women and 6 men.



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Albertine in Five Times

By Michel Tremblay

Tremblay presents the powerful story of one woman, Albertine, at five different times in her life. Together, the five Albertines provide a moving portrait of an extraordinary “ordinary” woman in this Chalmers Award-winning play. Cast of 6 women.



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Albertine in Five Times.

By Michel Tremblay

The powerful story of one woman, Albertine, at five times in her life. Cast of 6 women.



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All Fall Down

By Wendy Lill

A play about modern day witch-hunting. Cast of 2 women and 2 men.



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All the Verdis of Venice

By Normand Chaurette

Cast of 1 woman and 4 men.



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alterNatives

By Drew Hayden Taylor

Native activists and environmentally concerned vegetarians are invited to a dinner party, where irreconcilable cultural differences clash over moose roast and vegetarian lasagna. Cast of 3 women and 3 men.



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Amigo’s Blue Guitar

By Joan MacLeod

A college student’s life changes when he chooses to sponsor a Salvadoran refugee as a class project. Cast of 2 women and 3 men.



And So It Goes
And So It Goes

By George F. Walker

Gwen and Ned lose their former middle-class lifestyle as they attempt to comprehend the murder of their schizophrenic daughter Karen, even seeking solace in the wry musings of the ghost of Kurt Vonnegut.



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Another Country / bloom

By Guillermo Verdecchia

Two plays, on Argentina’s Dirty War of 1976–83, and on hope flowering in the midst of destruction, constitute an unsparing interrogation of a world perpetually at war.



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Another Home Invasion

By Joan MacLeod

This perceptively poignant Governor General’s Award-nominated play by Siminovitch Prize Winner MacLeod involves the hapless, substance-abusing, middle-aged petty criminal we expect to encounter, but is he the real threat to the elderly couple: who is it that’s robbing them of their possessions, their security, their relationship, their family—their home?



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Assorted Candies for the Theatre

By Michel Tremblay

An exquisite remembrance of childhood past in Montreal’s Plateau Mont-Royal neighbourhood, adapted and re-crafted to the stage. Cast of 3 women and 4 men.



The Baby Blues
Baby Blues

By Drew Hayden Taylor

A highly wrought farce of patrimony in a stifling, politically correct, post-colonial milieu of “fancy dancers” of every stripe on the pow wow trail. Cast of 3 women and 3 men.



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Balconville

By David Fennario

The English and French working class get together on their balconies in Montreal. Cast of 3 women and 6 men.



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Banana Boots

By David Fennario

A one-man-show/memoir in which Fennario recounts, with astonishing insight and wit, the phenomenon of taking his famous bilingual play, Balconville, to Belfast on a British / Canadian cultural mission. Cast of 1 man.



BASH'd
BASH'd

By Chris Craddock & Nathan Cuckow

While the goal of BASH’d is first and foremost to tell an engaging gay love story, it also flips the music industry’s gangsta stereotype of rap music on its head and returns it to its political roots—in this case to explore the dangers of the kind of attitudes that continue to condone and even encourage sexual discrimination of all kinds in our society. Not since Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner has a narrative poem inspired such empathy in the hearts and minds of its audience.



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Beating the Bushes

By Steven Bush

Steven Bush is a man on a mission—to confront the skeletons in his family closet. Did his very own cousins occupy the White House of a country that, even today, after electing its first African American president, still seems bent on world domination? What can he, a distant relation of the “Bushes” (so the story goes) do to end the madness and redeem the family name? Steven Bush’s one-man stand-up comedy, rant, political protest, and call for the war-crimes trials of both George H. W. and George W. Bush is a brash theatrical tour de force that dares his audiences to accompany him on a personal quest for evidence of honesty, decency, and complicity in a world of damning facts and murky conspiracy theories.



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Benevolence

By Morris Panych

Full of excruciating twists of fate and malice, this dark comedy of “trading places” resonates with uncomfortable truths about how we see (or don’t see) the people we live with every day. Cast of 2 women and three men.



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Bethune

By Rod Langley

A study of how one man’s vision may shape the world. Cast of 3 women and 6 men.



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Billy Bishop Goes to War

By John Gray

A musical about Canada’s famous World War I flying ace. Cast of 2 men.



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Boiler Room Suite

By Rex Deverell

The broken lives and the heroic struggle for joy of two “tramps” in a hotel boiler room. Cast of 1 woman and 2 men.



Bolsheviki cover
Bolsheviki

By David Fennario

Set in a hotel bar in Montreal on Remembrance Day, Bolsheviki has World War I veteran Harry “Rosie” Rollins telling young reporter Jerry Nines about his experience in the trenches. Rollins recalls men pissing their pants, losing limbs and planning a revolt against their officers. This cutting-edge drama, profoundly in opposition to conventional histories of Canadian troops in World War I, debunks every sentimental notion of duty, heroism and nationhood.



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Bonjour, Là, Bonjour

By Michel Tremblay

A beloved brother returns to his family. Cast of 6 women and 2 men.



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Bordertown Café

By Kelly Rebar

Young Jimmy faces a dilemma: embrace the hero of American popular myth as embodied by his father, or engage the task of building a different identity, embodied by his mother “on the Canadian side of nowhere.” Cast of 2 women and 2 men.



Burning Vision
Burning Vision

By Marie Clements

Dene miners, radium painters and people of Hiroshima labour under the false sun of uranium which poisons their relationships to the earth and to each other. Cast of 5 women and 12 men.



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Can You See Me Yet?

By Timothy Findley

A search for sanctuary in an Ontario insane asylum in 1938. Cast of 7 women and 4 men.



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Cariboo Magi

By Lucia Frangione

Hilarious drama ensues when a bedraggled troupe of players heads into the wilds of the Cariboo to perform a Christmas pageant. Set in the gold rush era, Cariboo Magi is an unabashed celebration of the power of theatre to renew our lives and banish our cares. Cast of 2 women and 2 men.



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Carmela’s Table

By Vittorio Rossi

The second play in Rossi’s A Carpenter’s Trilogy finds Italian war veteran Silvio in Montreal with his new family and his mother. Deeply traumatized by his wartime experiences, Silvio’s gradual unravelling ultimately threatens to destroy his family. Cast of 3 women and 2 men.



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Chimera

By Wendy Lill

This compelling drama by a former parliamentary critic for persons with disabilities explores the ethical controversy and public policy surrounding reproductive technologies, particularly cross-species chimeras. Cast of 2 women and 5 men.



Cold Comfort.

By Jim Garrard

Set in Saskatchewan, the geographic centre of Canada, Cold Comfort depicts the complex relationship among three characters. Cast of 1 woman and 2 men.



Colours in the Dark

By James Reaney

A mosaic of experiences that form a childhood. Cast of 2 women, 2 men, 1 female child and 1 male child.



Consecrated Ground
Consecrated Ground

By George Boyd

In Consecrated Ground, Nova Scotian playwright George Boyd retells the struggle of Africville’s residents to save their homes and their dignity. With tremendous wit and gravity, George Boyd takes us back to Africville on the verge of extinction, making us a gift of characters believable in their vulnerabilities, their courage and their outrage.



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Copper Thunderbird

By Marie Clements

A multi-layered and visionary drama of a life wracked by both triumph and ordeal, based on the persona of famed Ojibwa artist Norval Morrisseau. Cast of 5 women and 4 men.



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Corker

By Wendy Lill

Corker uses the familiar but difficult and treacherous 19th-century device of representing the family as a microcosm of the nation state. Cast of 2 women and 4 men.



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Crabdance

By Beverley Simons

A woman manipulates the men in her life into assuming the stereotypical privatized roles of husband, lover, father and son. Cast of 1 woman and 3 men.



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Cruel Tears

By Ken Mitchell

An innovative “country opera” set in Saskatoon, with a captivating parallel to Shakespeare’s Othello. Cast of 5 women, 10 men and a band.



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Cul-de-sac

By Daniel MacIvor

Written by one of Canada’s most influential postmodern playwrights, this dazzling one-man show is storytelling of the highest order.



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Cyrano De Bergerac

By Edmond Rostand

An epic and heroic tale that has enchanted generations, in an English prose translation that is immanently readable and stageable. Cast of 5 women and 12 men, plus many minor characters.



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Damnée Manon, Sacrée Sandra

By Michel Tremblay

Two interweaving monologues on the sacred and the profane. Cast of 1 woman and 1 man.



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Dancock's Dance

By Guy Vanderhaeghe

The influenza epidemic of 1918, and the ruin and chaos of the First World War resonate through the locked doors and barred windows of an insane asylum and into the lives of the patients confined within. Cast of 1 woman and 5 men.



Dead White Writer on the Floor
Dead White Writer on the Floor

By Drew Hayden Taylor

Dead White Writer on the Floor uses two literary conventions—theatre of the absurd and mystery novels—to create one of the funniest and thought-provoking plays ever about identity politics.



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Democracy

By John Murrell

In the midst of the American Civil War, Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson discuss the past, the future, life, love and what it means to be human. Cast of 4 men.



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Diplomacy

By Tim Carlson

Nominally about North American military involvement in Middle East wars, this graphic, conflict-fuelled drama scrutinizes the part the media plays in manufacturing our private reactions to foreign policy. Cast of 1 woman and 3 men.



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Divinity Bash / nine lives

By Bryden MacDonald

Bryden MacDonald’s most extreme venture into the world of the theatre to date: a play in which everything, and therefore nothing, is sacred. Cast of 3 women, 5 men and 1 transgendered person.



Doctor Thomas Neill Cream
Doctor Thomas Neill Cream

By David Fennario

In 1876, Jack the Ripper, a.k.a. Canadian Dr. Cream, graduated from McGill’s faculty of medicine. Cast of 4 women and 6 men.



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Down Dangerous Passes Road

By Michel Marc Bouchard

15 years after the death of their father, three brothers get together and drive out to the place where it happened: an old fishing spot on the river down Dangerous Passes Road. Cast of 3 men.



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Earshot

By Morris Panych

Doyle has a very funny problem: he hears too much. He can hear the most intimate details of the lives of everyone living in his apartment building. He blames his hyper-sensitive condition on a physical abnormality; but we’re not so certain. Cast of 1 man.



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En Pièces Détachées

By Michel Tremblay

The life of a lower-class family in East End Montreal. Cast of 4 women and 2 men.



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Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout

By Tomson Highway

Based on the signing of the Laurier Memorial, this play is a ritualized retelling of how the Native Peoples of British Columbia lost their land, rights and language—in one of the most tragic cases of cultural genocide to emerge from the history of colonialism. Cast of 4 women.



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Esker Mike and His Wife, Agiluk

By Herschel Hardin

A classic tragedy about Inuit life and how it is affected by white settlers, priests and government officials. Cast of 6 women and 9 men.



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Espresso

By Lucia Frangione

Sexy, provocative and challenging, Espresso inverts the Catholic stereotypes of feminine sexuality to boldly examine their corresponding masculine sexual emblems of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Cast of 1 woman and 1 man.



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Fifteen Miles of Broken Glass

By Tom Hendry

A look at post-World War II Canada from a recent high-school graduate’s viewpoint. Cast of 2 women and 9 men.



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For Home and Country

By Leanna Brodie

The rise of an urban and radicalized feminist agenda in the latter part of the 20th century leads to a head-on collision with its much more conservative, rural roots in the Women’s Institute, founded in 1897. Cast of 16 women and 3 men.



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For The Pleasure of Seeing Her Again

By Michel Tremblay

Tremblay offers glimpses of himself and his mother at five different stages of their lives together. Cast of 1 woman and 1 man.



Forever Yours, Marie-Lou
Forever Yours, Marie-Lou

By Michel Tremblay

Tremblay’s penetrating analysis of a Quebec family unit. Cast of 3 women and 1 man.



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Fragments of a Farewell Letter Read by Geologists

By Normand Chaurette

A dramatized inquiry in which five geologists are interrogated on the death of one of their colleagues in the Mekong Delta. Cast of 1 woman and 6 men.



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Fronteras Americanas

By Guillermo Verdecchia

One man’s struggle to find a home between two cultures, exploding the images and constructs built up around Latinos and Latin America. Cast of 1 man.



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George Ryga: The Other Plays

By George Ryga

Hoffman provides an effective and multifaceted description for the student seeking a quick understanding of Ryga’s stature as a playwright
Canadian Literature



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George Ryga: The Prairie Novels

By George Ryga

This collection includes Hungry Hills, Ballad of a Stonepicker and Night Desk.



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Gideon's Blues

By George Boyd

The profound humanity of Boyd’s characters reminds us that while neither drug abuse nor the breakdown of the traditional family is exclusive to the black community, racism accelerates their destructive effects in ghastly measures. Cast of 3 women and 4 men.



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Girl in the Goldfish Bowl

By Morris Panych

It’s into the goldfish bowl of a dysfunctional family that the audience peers with acute recognition, hysterical laughter and an overwhelming sense of the creative healing power of the imagination. Cast of 3 women and 2 men.



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Goodnight Disgrace

By Michael Mercer

From his wheelchair in a nursing home, Conrad Aiken recalls his long, stormy relations with Malcolm Lowry. Cast of 3 women and 4 men.



Gordon
Gordon

By Morris Panych

Gordon was always an odd little child, given his penchant for setting the neighbours’ sheds on fire with their pets locked inside, and his fascination with the funeral rituals at the church across the way. Home-schooled in the evenings within the bounds of a somewhat limited curriculum of drunken impromptu kitchen renovations and wife beatings in the resultant ruins by his father Gord, a man of troglodyte imagination and boundless determination for self-replication, his namesake son dedicates himself to these subjects with a kind of limitless and inarticulate awe. Something sinister and permanent involving the stairs to the basement seems to have happened to Gordon’s mother at a formative stage of his development, narrowing the scope of his education even further and leaving him at somewhat Oedipal loose ends.



Halo
Halo

By Josh MacDonald

When an image of Jesus appears on the side of a Tim Hortons restaurant, the town inhabitants are challenged to ask difficult questions about faith, life and love. Cast of 3 women and 4 men.



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Heaven

By George F. Walker

Instantly recognizable multicultural characters play out their coincidental relationships in a park on the outskirts of a city. Cast of 2 women and 4 men.



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Hellfire Pass

By Vittorio Rossi

Silvio Rosato shows up at the house of his estranged father and meets the family he raised in Chicago after leaving Silvio in Italy 36 years ago. Cast of 3 women and 4 men.



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Heroine

By Gail Scott

A woman tries to negotiate her personal passage from Quebec’s politically turbulent ’70s to the threatening bleakness of the ’80s.



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Homechild

By Joan MacLeod

Between 1860 and 1930, over 80,000 unaccompanied British children were “exported” to Canadian factories and farms, often exploited there as indentured child labourers. Cast of 5 women and 3 men.



Hosanna
Hosanna

By Michel Tremblay

A play about illusions. Cast of 2 men.



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Impromptu on Nuns' Island

By Michel Tremblay

In an impromptu get-together in an opera diva’s Nuns’ Island penthouse, on the afternoon of her return from Paris, her celebrity mother and her idealistic daughter lie in wait for her. Cast of 3 women and 1 man.



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In a World Created by a Drunken God

By Drew Hayden Taylor

A Canadian half-Native man is thrust into an absurd dilemma when he is asked to be tested for a possible kidney donation to his dying non-Native father, who abandoned him when he was two months old. Cast of 2 men.



In Piazza San Domenico cover
In Piazza San Domenico

By Steve Galluccio

A comedy of errors, this two-act play recounts the story of how one broken engagement ripples throughout friends and family, affecting all of their respective love lives in different ways. And there’s gossip. And an earthquake.



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In the Eyes of God

By Raul Sanchez Inglis

A vicious and unsparing look at the talent agencies that remake the Hollywood stars out of the willing clay of their own flesh. Cast of 3 women and 4 men.



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In the Eyes of Stone Dogs

By Daniel Danis

Before fleeing her eccentric island community, Djouke is determined to discover the mystery of her paternity. Cast of 4 women and 5 men.



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Jacob's Wake

By Michael Cook

A Maritime family’s tragedy, set in a raging storm. Cast of 2 women and 5 men.



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Je me souviens

By Lorena Gale

In this powerful dramatic monologue, Lorena Gale reconstructs for the audience her childhood and the experience of coming of age as an African Canadian in Montreal. Cast of 1 woman.



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Jitters

By David French

A sophisticated backstage comedy. Cast of 3 women and 6 men.



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Joe Beef

By David Fennario

Desperately poor immigrants find refuge with Montreal’s legendary barkeep, Joe Beef. Cast of 5 women and 5 men.



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La Duchesse de Langeais & Other Plays

By Michel Tremblay

A collection of five short plays by Quebec’s best known playwright: La Duchesse de Langeais; Berthe; Johnny Mangano and His Astonishing Dogs; Surprise, Surprise; and Gloria Star.



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La Maison Suspendue

By Michel Tremblay

A rich, emotional, sweeping drama of anger and sorrow spanning three generations. Cast of 3 women, 4 men and 1 male child.



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Lawrence & Holloman

By Morris Panych

Lawrence and Holloman, a hapless nerd and a loquacious salesman, meet by chance. From this fleetingly irritating and insignificant encounter comes a viciously murderous and incredulously bizarre plot. Cast of 2 men.



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Legoland

By Jacob Richmond

When Mom and Dad are busted for growing pot, Penny and Ezra Lamb embark on the wild road trip that comprises this vaudeville-inspired one-act play. Cast of 1 woman and 1 man.



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Les Belles Soeurs

By Michel Tremblay

Michel Tremblay’s classic Joual play. A housewife wins a million trading stamps in a lottery and invites her friends over to help her paste them into books. Cast of 15 women.



Les Canadiens
Les Canadiens

By Rick Salutin

A play about Quebec and Canada using hockey as a metaphor. Cast of 7 men.



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Life Without Instruction

By Sally Clark

A woman’s struggle for freedom, identity and dignity. Cast of 3 women and 5 men.



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Listen to the Wind

By James Reaney

Two stories intertwine and illuminate the relationship of life to its creative dream. Cast of 4 women, 4 men, 1 female child and 1 male child.



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Local Boy Makes Good

By John Gray

Three musicals by John Gray: 18 Wheels, Rock and Roll and Don Messer’s Jubilee.



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Lost Souls & Missing Persons

By Sally Clark

A comic, biting, surreal investigation of the question of self and identity in the North American middle-class. Cast of 9 women and 11 men.



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Ludwig & Mae

By Louis Patrick Leroux

Ludwig, trained as an engineer, hasn’t been able to find work since graduating. The fact that he is sardonic, philosophically inclined, and suicidal hasn’t helped in this regard. Mae, on the other hand, is an actress who has never been out of work. Caught in a relationship of co-dependency, she plays into Ludwig’s constant mind games until one day she decides she’s had enough. This three-play volume includes: Embedded, which establishes Ludwig and Mae’s Strindbergian relationship; Apocalypse, a monodrama in which Ludwig stages his own suicidal ceremonial; and Redemption, Mae’s testimonial, where she confronts and reconciles herself with Ludwig’s death, and finally comes into her own.



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Mambo Italiano

By Steve Galluccio

Outrageous pathos and hilarity is unleashed when Nino informs his very traditionally Italian parents that he is gay. A perfect balance of fast-paced comedy and poignant drama that explores family dynamics and the vast spaces between the old world and the new. Cast of 4 women and 3 men.



Marcel Pursued by the Hounds
Marcel Pursued by the Hounds

By Michel Tremblay

How our “innocent” childhood games and fantasies come back to haunt us in adult life. Cast of 4 women and 1 adolescent male.



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Marion Bridge

By Daniel MacIvor

Includes screenplay and stage play. Cast of 3 women.



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Memories of You

By Wendy Lill

The life of Elizabeth Smart pivoted on a turbulent affair that produced four children and her one book. This is a portrayal of the book as a record of one great life lived. Cast of 4 women and 1 man.



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Miss Julie

By August Strindberg & adaptation by David French

A riveting adaptation of a theatre classic about an affair between the daughter of a count and the count’s man-servant. Cast of 2 women and 1 man.



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Modern Canadian Plays, Vol. I

This fourth edition contains The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, Fortune and Men’s Eyes, Les Belles-Soeurs, Leaving Home, 1837: The Farmer’s Revolt, The St Nicholas Hotel, Zastrozzi, Billy Bishop Goes to War, Balconville, Doc, Drag Queens on Trial and The Occupation of Heather Rose.



Modern Canadian Plays, Volume I, Fifth Edition cover
Modern Canadian Plays, Vol. I - 5th Edition

This fifth edition contains The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, Les Belles Soeurs, Leaving Home, Sticks and Stones (The Donnellys, Part One), Zastrozzi, Billy Bishop Goes to War, Balconville, Blood Relations, Drag Queens on Trial, Bordertown Café, Toronto, Mississippi, Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, Lion in the Streets, and Life Without Instruction.



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Modern Canadian Plays, Vol. II

This fourth edition contains Bordertown Café, Polygraph, Moo, The Orphan Muses, 7 Stories, Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, Amigo’s Blue Guitar, Lion in the Streets, Never Swim Alone, Fronteras Americanas, Harlem Duet and Problem Child.



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Mom's the Word

By Linda A. Carson & Jill Daum & Alison Kelly

Humorous stories, bittersweet monologues, poetic reflections and revelatory anecdotes about motherhood.



Moo

By Sally Clark

When the feisty and rebellious Moragh (Moo) MacDowell meets the intriguing Harry Parker, she decides nothing will ever separate them … and Harry has been running ever since. Moo is an unconventionally comedy of love and obsession. Cast of 5 women and 3 men.



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Nothing to Lose

By David Fennario

Working-class survivors of the ’60s stage a workers’ sit-down strike. Cast of 9 men.



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Omniscience

By Tim Carlson

The play begs the question of how many of our freedoms have been lost to the institutions engaged in surveillance “for our own protection.”Cast of 2 women and 3 men.



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On the Job

By David Fennario

On Christmas Eve the workers in a Montreal shipping room get drunk and go on strike. Cast of 8 men.



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One Crack Out

By David French

Charlie Evans, a pool shark, has two days to pay off a debt, or have his legs broken by a psychotic debt collector who is also having an affair with his wife. Cast of 2 women and 8 men.



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Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth

By Drew Hayden Taylor

The emotional struggle of a Native woman who was adopted by a white family to acknowledge her birth family. Cast of 2 women and 2 men.



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Other Schools of Thought

By Morris Panych

Dramas that encourage adults to reflect on their past and young people to reflect on their future: Life Science, 2B WUT UR and Cost of Living.



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Paradise by the River

By Vittorio Rossi

After Canada officially declares war with Italy, Romano, a recent immigrant, is arrested without charge in his own home. Cast of 2 women and 8 men.



Paradise Garden
Paradise Garden

By Lucia Frangione

After generations of living in the paradise of their west coast family estate, the McKinnons have fallen on hard times—half of it has just been bought by a Turkish immigrant family. The heirs of both families, Day McKinnon and Leyla Zeki, fancy themselves to be sophisticated citizens of the world, alienated by their ancestors’ “outdated” traditions. Yet Leyla recognizes something fundamental and mysterious in the vestiges of the old estate garden, and Day has uncovered an ancient family secret there. Abandoning their families for their careers, Day and Leyla are reunited years later, having discovered that love is not just something that happens to us, but a paradise that we must build and tend by hand: like a garden in the wilderness of our lives.



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Past Perfect

By Michel Tremblay

Unleashing the dark secret of her being, Albertine, one of Tremblay’s most unforgettable heroines, sets out to re-conquer the beau she has lost to her younger sister. Cast of 3 women and 2 men.



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Playing Bare

By Dominic Champagne

A mordant satire on the relation between theatre and life. Cast of 2 women and 4 men.



Re: Producing Women’s History
Re: Producing Women’s History

By D.A. Hadfield

Hadfield traces the process of creating a theatrical “success” and investigates how the politics involved influences what we perceive as “good” playwriting.



Remember Me
Remember Me

By Michel Tremblay

Two ex-lovers meet and compare and confess their fears and disillusionments. Cast of 2 men.



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Rose

By Tomson Highway

A musical set on the Wasaychigan Hill Reserve in 1992. The battle for the future of the community builds to a shattering climax. Cast of 10 women and 7 men.



Saga of the Wet Hens
Saga of the Wet Hens

By Jovette Marchessault

Four Quebec women writers meet at the centre of a fabulous vortex. Cast of 4 women.



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Saint Frances of Hollywood

By Sally Clark

The tragic life of Frances Farmer, the raucous, idealistic, non-conforming movie star of the ’30s and ’40s. Cast of 4 women and 4 men.



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Sainte-Carmen of the Main

By Michel Tremblay

A play about cultural identity and cultural awakening based on a country and western singer of Montreal’s “The Main.”

Test
Cast of 4 women, 13 men and a chorus.



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Sainte-Marie among the Hurons

By James W. Nichol

A play about the conscience of a priest during the disastrous mission the Jesuits made to the Huron Indians in the 17th century. Cast of 11 men.



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Salt-Water Moon

By David French

The third book of the Mercer family saga. Cast of 1 woman and 1 man.



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Saucy Jack

By Sharon Pollock

In a stately Victorian drawing room, two old friends, James Kenneth Stephen, a scholar, and his former pupil, Prince Albert Victor, Queen Victoria’s nephew and heir to the throne, dance around the truth of the identity of London’s most notorious killer, Jack the Ripper, and while a tale of psychological intrigue is played out, an unravelling of tested friendship, betrayal, duplicity, and motive is revealed.



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Schoolhouse

By Leanna Brodie

Full of warmth and poignant humour this drama set in a one-room schoolhouse evokes a way of life shared by generations of rural North Americans, exploring timeless themes of rejection, of compassion, of damage, of hope. Cast of 5 women and 7 men.



Silver Dagger
Silver Dagger

By David French

French delivers a thriller guaranteed to have audiences perched on the edge of their seats. Cast of 4 women and 2 men.



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Sisters

By Wendy Lill

A tough uncompromising look at a convent-run Native residential school. The soul-destroying devastation caused by these institutions from the point of view of the nuns running the school. Cast of 4 women and 2 men.



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Six Plays by Mavor Moore

By Mavor Moore

In these theatre pieces stripped to the essentials of character sketches in quick, subtle lines, the emphasis is on the performer’s resources as an actor, rather than the externals of scene changes and stage contexts.



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Skydive

By Kevin Kerr

Having grown apart after a traumatic and defining moment in their youth, two brothers reconnect to fulfill a life-long ambition to go skydiving. Morgan (a feckless schemer who has recently reinvented himself as a counsellor) arrives on the doorstep of Daniel (a housebound agoraphobe), offering to help “liberate” his brother by administering his newly invented technique of “Paratherapy.” Convincing Daniel to face his fears by pursuing their long abandoned childhood dream of jumping from an airplane, the brothers begin a series of misguided training exercises to prepare for their adventure.



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Soldier's Heart

By David French

Esau Mercer, a veteran of the First World War, tries to persuade his alienated 16-year-old son, Jacob, not to leave. Slowly Esau’s devastating and unsparing account of what secrets lie in his soldier’s heart brings father and son together. Cast of 3 men.



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Somewhere Else

By George F. Walker

Contains Walker’s own selection of his early plays which matter; which for him have stood the test of time: Beyond Mozambique (1974), Zastrozzi (1977), Theatre of the Film Noir (1981) and Nothing Sacred (1988).



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Song of the Say-Sayer

By Daniel Danis

Three brothers strive to unite and care for their ailing sister after the death of their adoptive parents. Cast of 1 woman and 3 men.



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Spectacle of Empire

By Jerry Wasserman

Arguably the first North American play, this edition includes the original French script, two English translations, Ben Jonson’s Masque of Blackness and an extensive historical and critical introduction.



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Still Laughing

By Morris Panych

Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector
Georges Feydeau & Maurice Desvallières’ Hotel Peccadillo
Arthur Schnitzler’s The Amorous Adventures of Anatol
Introduction by Jerry Wasserman
The universal mark of good satire is still to make audiences laugh at the worst traits in human nature. Here, in his own words, is how Morris Panych updated these three great comedy classics from a century ago.



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Studies in Motion

By Kevin Kerr

Adultery, jealousy, murder and an abandoned child haunt the life of photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Cast of 5 women and 7 men.



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Suburban Motel

By George F. Walker

Six plays that take place in the same hotel room: Problem Child, Criminal Genius, Risk Everything, Adult Entertainment, Featuring Loretta and The End of Civilization.



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Talking Bodies

By Larry Tremblay

A collection of Larry Tremblay’s four memorable solo performances for the stage: A Trick of Fate, Anatomy Lesson, The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi and Ogre. With an introduction by Jane M. Moss.



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That Summer

By David French

A woman returns to the cottage country of Ontario where, 32 years before, she vacationed with her family. Cast of 5 women and 2 men.



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That Woman

By Daniel Danis

The story of a woman sent away from her family by her brother the Bishop after she is found exploring her sexuality at age seventeen. Cast of 1 woman and 2 men.



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The Adventures of Ali & Ali and the aXes of Evil

By Marcus Youssef & Guillermo Verdecchia & Camyar Chai

A hard-hitting and hilarious satire. Cast of 4 men.



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The Berlin Blues

By Drew Hayden Taylor

Concluding Taylor’s Blues Quartet, German developers here show up on the “Otter Lake Reserve” proposing “OjibwayWorld,” a Native theme park designed to attract Europeans tourists to this destination resort. Cast of 3 women and 3 men.



The Book of Esther cover
The Book of Esther

By Leanna Brodie

The Book of Esther examines the seemingly irreconcilable positions of two groups: conservative rural Christians and militantly anti-religious urban queer activists. But Brodie doesn’t take sides. Instead, it’s like she’s picked up a rock to discover what’s scurrying around underneath, pointed it out to us, and said, “Isn’t this interesting. Maybe we should all look at this for a while. Maybe we should talk about it, instead of just pretending that it isn’t there.”



The Boy in The Treehouse / Girl Who Loved Her Horses
The Boy in The Treehouse / Girl Who Loved Her Horses

By Drew Hayden Taylor

Two plays about the process of children becoming adults and the nature of, and necessity for, rites of passage in all cultures.



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The Buz'Gem Blues

By Drew Hayden Taylor

The third play in Taylor’s ongoing zany, often farcical examination of both Native and non-Native stereotypes in what is to become what he calls his “Blues Quartet.” Cast of 3 women and 3 men.



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The Carpenter

By Vittorio Rossi

This heart-wrenching but beautifully cathartic story of a family coming to grips with itself unfolds with unmistakably poignant honesty. Cast of 4 women and 5 men.



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The Concise Köchel

By Normand Chaurette

A lifetime’s devotion to the music of Mozart conceals a gruesome secret. Cast of 4 women.



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The Coronation Voyage

By Michel Marc Bouchard

Will a Montreal Mafioso sacrifice his young son for safe conduct to England? Cast of 6 women and 8 men.



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The Death of René Lévesque

By David Fennario

An astonishingly profound and prophetic political drama that delivers the powerful and cathartic stillbirth of a nation, stripped of both pity and fear. Cast of 2 women and 4 men.



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The Dishwashers

By Morris Panych

Haplessly determined to have his own miserable authority vindicated, chief dishwasher Dressler presides over the steam-choked basement of an upscale restaurant, tyrannizing his co-workers with his rants of pride of craft and Marxist rhetoric. Cast of 3 men.



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The Driving Force

By Michel Tremblay

The stormy and angst-filled relationship between Claude and his father Alex is compellingly played out with a cruel and disconsolate irony in an Alzheimer’s ward. Cast of 2 men.



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The Dunsmuirs: A Promise Kept

By Rod Langley

A dark family secret emerges in this second play about the wealthy and ill-fated Dunsmuir family. Cast of 3 women and 6 men.



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The Dunsmuirs: Alone at the Edge

By Rod Langley

The first of three plays in this saga of one of Canada’s wealthiest and most ruthless families. Cast of 2 women and 6 men.



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The East End Plays: Part 1

By George F. Walker

Contains the Governor General’s Award-winning Criminals in Love (1984), Chalmers Award-winning Better Living (1986) and Escape from Happiness (1987). With an introduction by Jerry Wasserman.



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The East End Plays: Part 2

By George F. Walker

Contains Beautiful City, Love and Anger and Tough.



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The Ecstasy of Rita Joe

By George Ryga

A lyric documentary about a young Indian girl who comes to the city only to die on Skid Row. Cast of 5 women and 15 men. Published in seven languages.



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The Edward Curtis Project

By Marie Clements
Photographs by

The Edward Curtis Project began when the Presentation House Theatre commissioned Marie Clements to write a play that would stage the issues raised by Curtis’ monumental but controversial achievement—to dramatize not only the creation of his photographic record of “the vanishing race of the North American Indian” and the enormous commitment, unwavering vision, sacrifice, poverty and ultimate disappointment it represented for the photographer, but also the devastating legacy that his often misrepresentative and imposed vision had on the lives of the people he touched.



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The Ends of the Earth

By Morris Panych

Panych’s brilliant tale reminds us all that fear can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Cast of 2 women and 3 men.



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The Execution

By Marie-Claire Blais

Two school boys plot and enact the murder of a classmate. Cast of 3 women and 17 men.



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The Fairies Are Thirsty

By Denise Boucher

Three women—a housewife, a whore and the Virgin Mary—fight to break out of the stereotypes in which they have been imprisoned for years. Cast of 3 women.



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The Faraway Nearby

By John Murrell

Georgia O’Keeffe resigns herself to an old age spent alone in the auburn and tawny light of her beloved Faraway mountains, in the desert’s dangerous energies, its desolate beauty, until a stranger enters her life. Cast of 1 woman and 1 man.



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The Fighting Days

By Wendy Lill

The polarities of public and private lives, and issues of racism and pacifism in the suffragette movement. Cast of 3 women and 1 man.



The Glace Bay Miners' Museum
The Glace Bay Miners' Museum

By Wendy Lill

A story of the ill-fated love between a wandering musician social-idealist and a Cape Breton coal miner’s daughter. Cast of 2 women and 3 men.



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The Great Wave Of Civilization

By Herschel Hardin

The destruction of the people of the Blackfoot Confederacy by the liquor trade in Alberta and Montana. Cast of 5 women and 13 men.



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The Gull

By Daphne Marlatt

Winner of the prestigious 2008 Uchimura Naoya Prize, The Gull is a play written in the classical Noh style. Set in 1950, when wartime restrictions on interned Japanese Canadians had finally been lifted, allowing them to return to the coast, it exquisitely dramatizes the historical link between the fishing town of Steveston, home to many Japanese Canadians, and Mio, the coastal village in Japan from which many of their ancestors originally emigrated. An international collaboration, The Gull featured: Noh master Akira Matsui, declared an Important Intangible Cultural Asset by Japan in 1998, as the main actor; music by American Noh expert Richard Emmert; masks by Wakayama artist Hakuzan Kubo; and a troupe of professional Noh musicians from Japan.



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The Heretic

By John Murphy

“If there is a God, why would He create us? If He’s perfect, all-knowing, there’s nothing he can gain from us.” Murphy’s play, centred around the playwright’s assumed persona of “Jesus Murphy,” opens up a discourse where creation interrogates religion; atheists engage believers; and secularists confront theists. Cast of 1 man.



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The Hope Slide / Little Sister

By Joan MacLeod

Two plays by Joan MacLeod: the Chalmers Award-winning The Hope Slide, and MacLeod’s first play for young audiences, Little Sister.



The Impromptu of Outremont
The Impromptu of Outremont

By Michel Tremblay

Three sisters have an “impromptu” and re-examine their personal and social problems. Cast of 4 women.



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The Lady Smith

By Andrew Moodie

Rather than confront her husband when she sees him with another woman, a blues singer follows the woman and insinuates herself into the other woman’s life. Cast of 3 women and 1 man.



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The Leisure Society

By François Archambault

A dark and thoroughly contemporary comedy. Cast of 2 women and 2 men.



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The Madonna Painter

By Michel Marc Bouchard

At the end of the First World War, to protect his village from the Spanish flu epidemic brought home by returning soldiers, a young priest recently arrived in the Parish of Lac St-Jean commissions a wandering Italian painter to decorate the walls of the local church with a fresco dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The presence of the foreign artist, his choice of a local virgin to serve as a model, and the frighteningly strange nature of his work will upset the lives and change the fate of the entire community.



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The Magnificent Voyage of Emily Carr

By Jovette Marchessault

Marchessault evokes the doubts, the trials and the joys of this singular existence. Cast of 3 women and 1 man.



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The Noam Chomsky Lectures

By Daniel Brooks & Guillermo Verdecchia

An innovative, multi-layered deconstruction of mass media and politics. Cast of 2 men.



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The Occupation of Heather Rose

By Wendy Lill

Young, naïve and inadequately trained nurse Heather Rose arrives in a remote Native community hoping to improve the lives of its residents, but ends up utterly disillusioned by the impotence of her interventions. Cast of 1 woman.



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The Power Plays

By George F. Walker

First published as a trilogy in 1986, The Power Plays contains Gossip (1977), Filthy Rich (1979) and The Art of War (1983). These three plays showcase the development and the culmination of Walker’s film noir style.



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The Queens

By Normand Chaurette

The shifting passions and ambitions of six women drawn from Shakespeare’s theatre. Cast of 6 women.



The Real World?
The Real World?

By Michel Tremblay

In The Real World?, Michel Tremblay returns to the very source of creative work, that notorious first play which supposedly contains the scenes of everything yet to come. And ultimately, he finds “himself” confronted with the same fundamental question over time. Did he have the right? Does he still have the right?

Cast of 4 women and 3 men.



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The Refugee Hotel

By Carmen Aguirre

Laid bare in the fictionalized autobiographical details of The Refugee Hotel are the universal truths both the victims and the survivors of political oppression continue to experience everywhere: the terror of persecution, arrest, and torture; the exhausted elation of escape; the trauma of learning to live again with the losses, betrayals, and agonies of the past; the irrational guilt of the survivor—even the tragedy of surviving the nightmares of the past only to have them return to challenge any hope of a future free of fear. More than a dark comedy about a group of Chilean refugees who arrive in Vancouver in 1974 after Pinochet’s coup, this play is Carmen Aguirre’s attempt to give voice to refugee communities from all corners of the globe.



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The Riddle of the World

By David French

A stockbroker and an ex-priest get together to console themselves after being abandoned by their mates and are forced to come to terms with their fragile natures as men. Cast of 3 women and 2 men.



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The Satchmo' Suite

By Hans Böggild & Doug Innis

A black cellist, on tour with a classical symphony orchestra, invokes the ghost of Louis Armstrong to help him with a difficult passage from Bach’s Six Suites for Solo Cello. The highly mythologized spirit of “the father of jazz himself” takes form in the cellist’s hotel room, where the lives of the characters intertwine and begin to play off each other, and issues of class, hope, courage, family, and race emerge in a lively and powerful struggle between head and heart, intellect and intuition. Ultimately, the drama resolves with the cellist’s beautiful rendition of the Bach piece. Full of great jazz and classical music, but using none of Satchmo’s own compositions, the play incorporates nine original jazz songs, co-written by the author-musicians, into the action.



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The Seagull

By Anton Chekhov

A revitalization of a Russian theatre classic. Cast of 5 women and 8 men.



The Shape of a Girl / Jewel cover
The Shape of a Girl / Jewel

By Joan MacLeod

The Shape of a Girl examines the code of silence and tacit complicity which surrounded the sensationalized murder of Reena Virk by school-aged bullies in 1997. Jewel is based on the real-life catastrophe of the sinking of the Ocean Ranger, an oil rig off the coast of Newfoundland, in 1982.



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The Tale of Teeka

By Michel Marc Bouchard

A play set in rural Quebec in the ’50s in which a battered child, Maurice, seeks refuge in a fantasy world. Cast of 1 man and 1 male child.



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The Trespassers

By Morris Panych

When inspector Milton shows up in a town in the middle of nowhere to investigate a mysterious murder, fifteen year-old Lowell’s skills at shaping the truth to protect both himself and those he cares about are put to the ultimate test: shall he plea bargain, or stick to the truth as he understands it? As Hardy once pointed out to him, “There’s something in between lying and not lying. It’s called a story.”



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The Trial of Judith K.

By Sally Clark

Roughly based on The Trial by Franz Kafka, this black comedy changes the lead character to a modem business woman who finds herself accused of an unknown crime. The more she delves into the bureaucratic nightmare the more her ordered, little world unravels and the more she is entangled in the increasingly obscure process.



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The Trigger

By Carmen Aguirre

Based on the author’s own experience as a victim of the Paper Bag Rapist, The Trigger is a play written for anyone who has ever dealt with sexual violation and who continues to live with it at their core. Cast of 5 women.



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The Unnatural and Accidental Women

By Marie Clements

A surrealist dramatization of a notorious 30-year murder case involving many mysterious deaths in the “Skid Row” area of Vancouver. Cast of 11 women and 2 men.



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The Ventriloquist

By Larry Tremblay

Theatre of innovation. Cast of 2 women and 2 men.



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The Vic

By Leanna Brodie

The Vic creates an ensemble of eight ethnically diverse women ranging in age from their teens to their fifties, each of them eager to claim the entitlement they feel their status as victim has “naturally” conferred upon them. Cast of 8 women.



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The Weekend Healer

By Bryden MacDonald

The disappearance of a young man acts as a catalyst for a drama that questions the nature of family and “traditional values.” Cast of 2 women and 1 man.



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Tiln & Other Plays

By Michael Cook

Three short plays by Cook: Tiln, Quiller and Therese’s Creed.



Tombs of the Vanishing Indian cover
Tombs of the Vanishing Indian

By Marie Clements

Clements’s play is a compelling, and poetic, investigation of the coldly bureaucratic machinations that have, throughout history, attempted to facilitate the disappearance of Native people. Though Tombs of the Vanishing Indian focuses on specific policies and locations, it speaks eloquently to broader themes of Aboriginal displacement. There are, indeed, echoes of Canadian policy aimed at the dissolution of First Nations families and culture: the potlatch ban, residential schools and the ban on Native language, whose profoundly damaging ramifications are our shared legacy.



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Toronto, Mississippi

By Joan MacLeod

Drawing from MacLeod’s experience working with mentally handicapped adults and children, this play celebrates the personal challenges of both self-destruction and self-affirmation so vital to the process of identity creation. Cast of 2 women and 2 men.



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Twenty Years at Play

By Jerry Wasserman

This collection of eight of the finest plays produced by Vancouver’s New Play Centre marks the company’s 20th year.



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Two Plays

By George Woodcock

This volume contains two uniquely Canadian stories of exile: The Island of Demons and Six Dry Cakes for the Hunted.



Unity (1918) cover
Unity (1918)

By Kevin Kerr

In the fall of 1918, a world ravaged by four years of war was suddenly hit by a mysterious and deadly plague. As fear of the dreaded “Spanish” flu begins to fill the town of Unity with paranoia, drastic measures are taken. Cast of 6 women and 3 men.



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Vigil

By Morris Panych

An extremely self-centred and shallow person finds himself, through his own errors and inattentiveness, in a life-and-death situation. Cast of 1 woman and 1 man.



Vigil, Second Edition cover
Vigil - 2nd Edition

By Morris Panych

Vigil is about a man returning—after thirty years—to sit with a female relative on her deathbed. Kemp, the protagonist, is an extremely self-centred and shallow person who uses acid wit and seemingly callous indifference to cover up the profound discomfort he experiences upon finding himself part of a death watch. Kemp’s problem is: she’s not dying fast enough. Gallows humour and Kemp’s diatribes on humanity and mortality fuel this delightfully dark narrative, but it is Grace’s economical contributions to the dialogue (she’s a woman of few words) that give this play its weight and profundity.



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Waiting for the Parade

By John Murrell

Waiting for the Parade is set in Calgary during World War II, in which five women gather to work for the war effort while their men are away. Cast of 5 women.



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Walsh

By Sharon Pollock

A historical documentary of Sitting Bull’s exile in Canada after the Montana massacre at Little Big Horn. Cast of 3 women and 11 men.



Wanted
Wanted

By Sally Clark

Set during the Klondike gold rush, Wanted is a celebration of one woman’s determination to triumph over all who seek to possess her in a harsh social climate of chaos, opportunism, raw desire, greed and lust. Cast of 2 women and 4 men.



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Warriors

By Michel Garneau

Warriors enters the world of advertising where even if the product is war, it is still a product that can be sold. Cast of 2 men.



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WASPS

By Sally Clark

A play about the elements of our constructed tribal identities: incest, fashion, fetishism, style, populist art, amateur psychobabble and a fascination with the other. Cast of 4 women and 2 men.



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Westray

By Chris O’Neill & Ken Schwatrz

Although the Westray mine is dangerously mismanaged, a young father descends under the ground again to support his family. Cast of 2 women and 3 men.



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Whale Riding Weather

By Bryden MacDonald

A faded old man finds his life slipping away from him along with his young male lover, who meets a new, younger man. Cast of 3 men.



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What Lies Before Us

By Morris Panych

Two–time Governor General’s Award–winning playwright Panych has turned Waiting for Godot into a comedy while simultaneously heightening the profound existential questions it asks. Cast of 3 men.



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Where the Blood Mixes

By Kevin Loring

Can a person survive their past; can a people survive their history? Irreverently funny and brutally honest, this play about loss and redemption takes us to the bottom of a river, to the heart of a People. Cast of 2 women and 4 men.



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Whereverville

By Josh MacDonald

On the evening of Loam Bay’s vote on resettlement, schoolteacher Abby Shea, herself “from away,” must struggle with her own phantom attachment to the community before casting her deciding vote. Cast of 1 woman and 4 men.



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Willful Acts

By Margaret Hollingsworth

An expanded and updated collection of Margaret Hollingsworth’s best known and most popular plays, including The Apple in the Eye, Everloving, Diving, Islands, War Babies and Commonwealth Games.



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With Bated Breath

By Bryden MacDonald

With Bated Breath is a poignant look at the disappearance of a shy, young gay man who leaves his community behind to start a new life in the big city. There, hopelessly awkward and naïve, caught in the cynical and brutalizing cash-economy of the city’s red light district, he retreats ever further into a world of fantasy and anonymity. Though his self-appointed, new-found, and worldly-wise mentor cautions him: “There’s nothing safe. We’re never safe. If you ever thought you were, you were in denial,” it’s too late for this dreamer who ignored the best advice he ever got from those who cared for him: “You just don’t find a soul mate—you have to invent them. Cuz love at first sight sure don’t last.”



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Written on Water

By Michel Marc Bouchard

A group of seniors struggles to rescue and rewrite their memories when torrential rains wash away all records of their past. Cast of 3 women and 3 men.



Thursday February 2, 2012 in Meta-Talon

How to Bank Your Life on Speculative "Futures"

Jonathan Ball interviews Garry Thomas Morse about various speculative “futures”:

In two volumes of The Chaos! Quincunx, I use what William S. Burroughs called the “fold-in” method, which feels rather like battering some batter in a bowl. This process is exciting, because of its sense of immediacy. I’m never quite sure what the characters are going to do next!

Thursday January 26, 2012 in Meta-Talon

For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again Comes to Kamloops

Michel Tremblay’s For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again comes to Kamloops:

They may seem like everyday moments — and in many ways they are — but, with Lorne Cardinal and Margo Kane playing the only two characters, the play becomes “an homage to his mother,” Leyshon said.

Specks cover Monday January 23, 2012 in Meta-Talon

Anis Shivani Interviews Michael McClure

Anis Shivani interviewed Beat Poet Michael McClure On Jim Morrison, The Doors, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac for The Huffington Post on March 03, 2011:

Shivani: Is Olson the major figure in American poetry after Pound?

McClure: I do not like seeing poetry as literature rather than art and I’m not happy with the separation of Poetry and the sister arts, I prefer to see Art as Art. I perceive that a major figure after Pound would be Jackson Pollock, and instead of looking at “American” Poetry as William Carlos Williams exhorted all to do, I would look worldwide at the poetry of D.H. Lawrence, Federico Garcia Lorca, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and of course Charles Olson, and all.

On the Material Thursday January 12, 2012 in Meta-Talon

Direct Harkening: A Review of On the Material

Andrew Vaisius reviews 2011 BC Book Prize Winner On the Material:

This poetry burns straight into your thoughts with a third degree of truth. Words matter. They aren’t frilly or sentimental, hoity-toity or academic. Collis writes in a language unencumbered by tired cliché or overwrought descriptions. His is a direct harkening, devoid of affectation, expressing the gut endurance of each sparking woman/man capable of the “natural brilliance of the human spirit.”

Spring 2012 Catalogue

CURRENT FRONT LIST


 
All Is Flesh cover
All Is Flesh

Yannick Renaud
Translated by Hugh Hazelton
Poetry

Bolsheviki cover
Bolsheviki

David Fennario
Drama

Chinese Blue cover
Chinese Blue

Weyman Chan
Poetry

Crossing the Continent cover
Crossing the Continent

Michel Tremblay
Translated by Sheila Fischman
Fiction

Davie Street Translations cover
Davie Street Translations

Daniel Zomparelli
Poetry

Imperial Canada Inc.
Imperial Canada Inc.

Alain Deneault
Translated by Fred A. Reed & Robin Philpot
Non-Fiction

Maleficium cover
Maleficium

Martine Desjardins
Translated by Fred A. Reed & David Homel
Fiction

Modern Canadian Plays, Volume I, Fifth Edition cover
Modern Canadian Plays, Vol. I - 5th Edition


Edited by Jerry Wasserman
Drama

Specks cover
Specks

Michael McClure
Poetry

Taking My Life cover
Taking My Life

Jane Rule
Non-Fiction

textual vishyuns
textual vishyuns

Carl Peters
Non-Fiction

The Book of Esther cover
The Book of Esther

Leanna Brodie
Drama

Tombs of the Vanishing Indian cover
Tombs of the Vanishing Indian

Marie Clements
Drama

Turkana Boy cover
Turkana Boy

Jean-François Beauchemin
Translated by Jessica Moore
Fiction

Vigil, Second Edition cover
Vigil - 2nd Edition

Morris Panych
Drama


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