False Starts

False Starts presents a series of determining moments between two people stuck reliving the same moment over and over, but in unexpected ways and in different genres (from diary to dramatic dialogue, film script to sound installation). Their interdependence and fundamental inability to say how they feel for one another over twenty years – in spite of their eloquence, in spite of their creativity – constitutes the background of the ongoing spectacle of their relationship.

Made up of a series of short pieces originally published in French as Dialogues fantasques pour causeurs éperdus, this translation by the author and Alexandre St-Laurent with Katia Grubisic, also offers previously unpublished texts. Originally staged for the stage, screen, and elevator at Montreal’s matralab.

AUTHOR

Katia Grubisic

Katia Grubisic is a writer, editor, and translator whose work has appeared in various Canadian and international publications. Her collection What if red ran out was shortlisted for the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry and won the 2009 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for best first book. Her translations of David Clerson’s Brothers and Alina Dumitrescu’s A Cemetery for Bees were both shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for translation.

AUTHOR

Louis Patrick Leroux

Louis Patrick Leroux is an associate professor in both the English and French departments at Concordia University. A playwright and theatre director, he is also a scholar whose academic research focuses on cultural discourse, research-creation, Québec theatre, and contemporary circus. He was playwright in residence at Sudbury’s Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario (1993–94, 2005–06, and 2006–07), the Leighton Artists’ Studios at the Banff Centre for the Arts in 1994, and the CEAD International playwrights residency in 1999. He founded and managed Ottawa’s Théâtre la Catapulte in the 1990s and has since focused on impossible, improbable, and necessary drama.