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Plays for World Theatre Day
World Theatre Day was initiated in 1961 by the International Theatre Institute (ITI). It is celebrated annually on March 27 by ITI Centres and the international theatre community. We love celebrating World Theatre Day, with our fantastic collection of Canadian-published drama.
All Books in this Collection
Showing 1–16 of 19 results
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Age of Minority
$19.95Winner of the 2014 Governor General’s Literary Award
Based on a true story, Get Yourself Home Skyler James follows the harrowing journey of a young lesbian who defects from the army when she is outed by fellow soldiers. The award-winning rihannaboi95 centres around a Toronto teen whose world comes crashing in when YouTube videos of him dancing to songs by his favourite pop heroine go viral. Finally, Peter Fechter: 59 Minutes chronicles the last hour of Peter Fechter’s life, a teenager in East Berlin shot while attempting to cross the Berlin Wall in 1962 with his companion. Together these solo plays explore the lives of three queer youth and their resilience in the face of violence and intolerance.
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Concord Floral
$17.95Concord Floral is a one-million-square-foot abandoned greenhouse and a refuge for neighbourhood kids; a place all to themselves in which to dream, dare, and come of age. But hidden there is a secret no one wants to confront, and when two friends stumble upon it they set off an unstoppable chain of events, from shadows in parking lots to phone calls from the grave. It’s time for the teens of Concord Floral to start talking.
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Freda & Jem’s Best of the Week
$17.95Jem is a self-described butch dyke from Montreal who always imagined spending her life in bars and having multiple flings. When she meets Freda, a woman who exposes Jem’s vulnerabilities, her preconceived notions of who she is become moot as she finds herself partnered in a long-term relationship with kids. Which she surprisingly loves—most of the time. But that’s all changing as Jem and Freda’s marriage shifts from one of love and lust to one of gripes and grumbles. Freda & Jem’s Best of the Week is a love story that explores the struggle for identity as a couple reconciles a new way of loving one another while accepting their new familial reality.
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HER2
$17.95In this poignant meditation on the uneasy relationship between science and the human spirit, a group of women aged nineteen to fifty with HER2-related breast cancer are recruited for a clinical drug trial. For some of them the trial is renewed hope; others feel it’s a weary last resort. For Dr. Danielle Pearce, the research scientist in charge of the program, the trial is the most critical moment in her career. Her mission is global, and measured outcomes are her chief concern. But in the chemo room, medical statistics are just background noise as the women gradually form a collective bond through humour and compassion, raising the question, does community positively influence immunity?
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If We Were Birds
$16.95If We Were Birds is a shocking, uncompromising examination of the horrors of war, giving voice to a woman long ago forced into silence, and placing a spotlight on millions of female victims who have been silenced through violence. A deeply affecting and thought-provoking re-imagining of Ovid’s masterpiece “Tereus, Procne, and Philomela,” Erin Shields’s award-winning play is an unflinching commentary on contemporary war and its aftermath delivered through the lens of Greek tragedy.
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Inside the Seed
$18.95Winner of the 2015 Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Original Script
Inside the Seed is a contemporary version of Oedipus Rex reimagined as a darkly comic political thriller.
Mirroring controversial real-life scientific and corporate controversies, Inside the Seed concerns a once-brilliant scientist who made a startling discovery: a bio-engineered form of rice that could save an overpopulated world on the brink of catastrophic famine. The play examines how good, smart, well-intentioned individuals are drawn into, and corrupted by, complex institutional systems, be they corporate, military, or governmental.
Cast of 5 men and 4 women.
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It Is Solved By Walking
$16.95When Margaret learns of the death of her former husband, she recalls their earliest days together as Ph.D. candidates, beginning a journey through her past. Told through the sensations of Wallace Stevens’s poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” the subject of her uncompleted thesis, Margaret evokes beautiful, ordinary and painful sexual memories from before, after and during their marriage. Stevens, a guiding voice in her head for twenty-five years, cajoles Margaret into unearthing the reasons she never became the poet, scholar, wife or mother she thought she would be. Bold and poetic, It is Solved by Walking is an intimate portrait of a writer making her way back to poetry one step at a time.
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Kill Me Now
$17.95When Joey enters puberty, his father Jake finds himself in a morally ambiguous position. Joey is severely disabled, but he still has the same sexual desires as any seventeen-year-old boy, only he can’t do anything to relieve the tension. Jake is a widower whose life is devoted to his son, but when he suddenly develops a serious medical condition, he becomes the one to rely on the people around him, including his sister Twyla, his friend Robyn, and Joey’s best friend Rowdy. As Jake’s condition worsens, an ethical dilemma troubles the household as everyone is forced to consider the possibility of saying goodbye.
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Mahmoud
$16.95Mahmoud is an exuberant, if overwhelmingly passionate, Iranian engineer-cum-taxi driver who relishes the chance to regale his passengers with his love of Persian culture. Emanuelos, a fabulously gay Spanish perfume salesman, can talk a mile-a-minute about his boyfriend, Behnam. And then there’s Tara, an awkwardly charming Iranian Canadian preteen who just wants to be “normal,” whatever that means. When the three strangers find themselves crossing paths in the busy streets of Toronto, their experiences with racism, sexism, homophobia, homesickness, and everything in between become intertwined in unexpected ways.
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Mary’s Wedding
$17.95On the night before her wedding, Mary dreams of a thunderstorm, during which she unexpectedly meets Charlie sheltering in a barn beside his horse. With innocence and humour, the two discover a charming first love. But the year is 1914, and the world is collapsing into a brutal war. Together, they attempt to hide their love, galloping through the fields for a place and time where the tumultuous uncertainties of battle can’t find them. A play with a heart as big as the skies that serve as its stage, Mary’s Wedding is an epic, unforgettable story of love, hope, and survival.
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Mutant Sex Party
$16.00In Mutant Sex Party & Other Plays, Ed Macdonald eviscerates the high and the mighty, the hypocritical, and those who abuse power in late-Capitalism America. He expertly peels back the tattered facade of corporate respectability and reveals the hypocrisy that is brokered and sold under the guise of “doing business” in America. These plays dig deep at the rot that lies at the base of a free-rein, unregulated, capitalist market system.
As well as the title piece, the collection includes The Escape Artist, Erratica, Gemini, Smoke & Blood, Hot Meat and Titus Lucretius Carus.
Most of the plays in this collection were first produced by The Drilling Company in New York.
Praise for Mutant Sex Party & Other Plays:
“Ain’t no party like a Mutant Sex Party ‘cause a Mutant Sex Party don’t stop! Okay – now that’s out of my system. For the characters in these plays, however, nothing ever gets out of their system. They are all stuck, bottled up, locked in constant struggles of domination – legally, politically and sexually. That said, Macdonald is such a good writer that he makes you care about these characters. … ancient Romans and Hipsters, Crazy Ladies and Cops – everyone’s been invited to this Mutant Sex Party, including you. Will you accept Macdonald’s invitation?” (A.G.Pasquella, Broken Pencil)
On the play Mutant Sex Party:
“The audience is constantly on the edge of their seats wondering, ‘What’s real? What’s a fantasy?’ … a complex and challenging play that is very political in nature. Don’t let the title fool you; this is about mutant politics as much as sex. We are reminded that while lying and cheating are accepted in politics a blowjob can ruin a career … a dynamic roller coaster of a theatrical experience.” (Karl Wilder, ONOFFOFF)
On the play Gemini:
“… a crisp and clear loony toon takes over an asylum to carry out his dreams of becoming a ‘moderate fascist dictator’ … an enjoyable and illuminating experience” (The Village Voice)
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Sultans of the Street
$15.95When young orphans Mala and Chun Chun encounter brothers Prakash and Ojha on the busy streets of Kolkata, they are immediately at odds. The brothers come from a lower-middle-class family and spend their time flying kites instead of attending class, while Mala and Chun Chun can only dream of going to school, a goal Aunty promises will be fulfilled if they beg for money from passersby. After a petty fruit-stall heist lands Ojha in Aunty’s cunning hands, the brothers are blackmailed into begging alongside Mala and Chun Chun, forcing the children to interact. Though they find each other nuisances at first, the kids soon realize their strength in numbers as Aunty’s scheming is slowly revealed.
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The Fish Eyes Trilogy
$24.95Three coming-of-age solo shows that follow the lives of teenage girls who attend the same high school and process their real-life dilemmas through dance, while exploring the heartaches of youth and the meaning of heritage.
Fish Eyes is the story of Meena, a classically trained Indian dancer who, despite being obsessed with Bollywood movies and her dance career, just wants to be like the rest of her high-school friends. When she develops a massive crush on Buddy, the popular boy at school, Meena contemplates turning down an incredible opportunity to pursue him, even if he barely notices her.
Boys With Cars follows Naz, also a classically trained Indian dancer, who dreams of getting out of small town Port Moody to attend the University of British Columbia. But when Buddy causes a stir over Naz at school, Naz’s university plans begin to crumble quickly.
Let Me Borrow That Top centres on Candice, a girl who appropriates Meena’s Indian dance skills and bullies Naz after a nasty rumour spreads through the halls of their high school. But like her two enemies, Candice shares a passion for Indian dancing, and has just been accepted to the Conventry School of Bhangra. Will she leave behind the comforts of home to pursue her dreams?
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The Foursome
$15.95Rick, Ted, Donnie, and Cameron are home for their fifteen-year college reunion; a great time to go out for a game of golf and catch up on each other’s lives. Unlike their college days, the conversation doesn’t include talk of beer and final exams, but of colonoscopies, home-security systems, alcoholism, Buddhism, and more.
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The Gentleman Clothier
$15.95Experienced tailor Norman Davenport has barely opened the doors to his new clothing store in downtown Halifax when Sophie, an exuberant young woman, barges in looking for work, followed by Patrick, a single father who claims to be handy. Hesitantly Norman hires them both to tie up the last few threads before the grand opening. And whether Norman realizes it or not, he needs help getting into the twenty-first century to cater to the current tastes of his customers. When the shop’s first customer, Alisha Sparrow, a friendly, attractive woman, drops in looking for a suit for her husband, Norman is smitten against his better judgment. His sensible, modest world has become profoundly complicated in less than a week, and Norman longs to live in a simpler time. Unfortunately for him, his life is about to get messier as he wakes to find things are not what they used to be.
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The Watershed
$18.95How much do we value clean water? Enough to stop our industrialized way of life from degrading it? The documentary play The Watershed follows an artist and her family in the struggle to chart a sustainable course between economic prosperity and environmental stewardship.
Largely constructed from original interviews conducted by the playwright, The Watershed brings to the stage a multiplicity of ideological perspectives and conflicting visions for Canada’s natural resources, and its characters speak the words of real Canadians from all across the political spectrum.
As the play reaches its boiling point, one thing becomes abundantly clear: a contemporary play about water in Canada must also be about oil. And so the playwright and family travel to Alberta’s tar sands, encountering along the way some of the world’s great freshwater scientists, some of Canada’s fiercest environmental activists, and impassioned individuals at work in the country’s burgeoning oil sector.
Policy is anything but dry in The Watershed; in fact, it holds startling implications for our national identity and future.
Cast of eight women and men.