Described by Variety as ‘Yukon Gothic,’ Claudia Dey’s acclaimed play Trout Stanley is set in northern British Columbia, on the outskirts of a mining town between Misery Junction and Grizzly Alley. In this inhospitable setting live a pair of sisters, twins who are not identical in any way: Sugar, a complicated, insecure waif who still wears the tracksuit her mother died in ten years prior, and Grace, a rough-and-tumbl ...
Theatre doesn’t have much relevance anymore. Or so acclaimed playwright Darren O’Donnell tells us. The dynamics of unplanned social interaction, he says, are far more compelling than any play he could produce. So his latest show, A Suicide-Site Guide to the City, isn’t really a show; it’s an interactive chitchat about memory, depression, and 9/11, a dazzling whirl of talking streetcars, pizza and schizophr ...
pppeeeaaaccceee, is a vast, imaginative and mesmerizing glide through Life and Power. The play is set in Ephemeral; three people firmly floating chat – in O'Donnell's inimitable rapid-fire style – about the revolution. Which revolution? Good question. A gently aggressive meditation, pppeeeaaaccceee examines our being, asks us what we're doing and reminds us that there are monsters in here. Peace. Say it slow, st ...
Beckett meets Betty Boop in this trilogy of monologues by Canadian cult heroine Pochsy, a nasty, vapid, utterly charming vixen. In Pochsy's Lips, she's in the hospital, convinced she's sick because she's got a squid where her heart should be. In Oh Baby, she's at the Last Resort, on holiday from her job packing mercury. And in Citizen Pochsy, our little minx is in the waiting room at an audit from hell. In The Pochsy Pla ...
Ogres, trolls, demons – monsters, like violence, are always represented as male. Not this time. Celebrated playwright RM Vaughan gives us, in three one-act monologues, three very monstrous women. In A Visitation by St Teresa of Avila upon Constable Margaret Chance, we meet a middle-aged police officer whose world view is determined by her obsession with race, bloodlines and genetic determinism. The Susan Smith Tapes (made into a film f ...
Isolated brings together two inventive, disturbing plays by one of Canada’s most intriguing dramatic voices. In Recovery, people around the world are addicted to a mysterious substance. Large recovery centres are set up, promising refuge, treatment and healing to millions of addicts. But all is not what it seems. Following three residents of a facility in Antarctica, McArthur delivers a quirky and unsettling play that reveals the fear ...
These four plays – White Mice, Who Shot Jacques Lacan?, Radio Rooster Says That's Bad and Over – written by Darren O'Donnell for his theatre company, Mammalian Diving Reflex, will challenge your politics, your ontology and everything you hold to be safe, stable and sacrosanct. ...
Hippies and Bolsheviks and Other Plays collects three works by Amiel Gladstone, introducing a wide range of fascinating characters and a formidable new voice in Canadian drama. In The Wedding Pool, three single friends in unsatisfactory jobs decide to place a bet on who will marry first. The friends – waitress and wannabe dancer Sylvia, rock critic Miles and inventory manager Dave – open a joint account to which they each cont ...
In the vast, unnamed metropolis of Hello … Hello, art and commerce have finally and completely conjoined; stylish cafés serve up zebra mussels and the air is thick with a gentle rain of sparrows plummeting down from the mirrored office towers. Everywhere, people are falling for an edgy new fashion accessory: a shiny ball filled with poison that hangs from a delicate chain. In this oddly peaceful world, Cassandra, a salesgirl a ...
