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Tulip and other Plays

By (author): Don Druick

Introduction by: Brian Quirt

These plays clustered about the themes of the fragility of love and the ephemerality of life. TULIP (2006). Commissioned and developed by Nightswimming Theatre. Set in the madness of 17th Century Holland during the spectacular and frighteningly strange Dutch obsession with tulip bulbs, TULIP is a wild play about greed, beauty, deceit and botany. The bubble bursts; within days, many are ruined. Starvation and poverty ensue. Adrift in a sea of menacing shadows, the characters of TULIP must now desperately try to reconstruct their shattered lives with only the broken mirror of their hopes and dreams to guide them. WILDEST DREAMS (2013). Developed by Nightswimming Theatre & Playwrights Workshop Montrèal. Poor old Jack. It just keeps going bad. Is that any way to have a life, thinks he? Would it rain?, he wondered, gazing fearfully into the dark grey sky. It smelt like rain. A conspiracy of nature? Its no good – Audrey’s screwing around. And nobody cares. And nothing makes any sense. WILDEST DREAMS is the story of middle-aged love, or love past middle-age, or the failure of this love. ALL THINGS AT ONCE (2019). Developed by Playwrights Workshop Montrèal. A contemporary lamination, an elegy for the authenticity of experience, and for re-claiming one’s own life. Which, after all, is the same as love. ALL THINGS AT ONCE features a giant Gulliver, dancing cows, ferocious boundaries, counterfactual history, and shocking deaths. The protagonist, the poet Byron – his delusion (not always charming but somehow courageously engaging) – drives him to seek out a frighteningly desperate truth to the raw reality of his life. A life where love and loss predominate the landscape.

AUTHOR

Brian Quirt

Brian Quirt is the founder and Artistic Director of Nightswimming, a dramaturgical company based in Toronto, and Director of the Banff Centre Playwrights Lab. With Nightswimming he has commissioned and developed 30 new works, created eight of his own plays, and directed the premieres and national tours of many Nightswimming projects including, new works by Don Druick, Carmen Aguirre and Anita Majumdar.


AUTHOR

Don Druick

Don Druick is a distinguished playwright, translator, a baroque flutist, and an avid bread baker. In a career spanning more than 50 years, Don Druick’s plays and translations have been produced on stage, radio and television in Canada, Europe, Japan, and the USA. He has received twelve Canada Council grants in Theatre, Creative Writing, Performance Art; as well as grants from the Ministère des Affairs Culturale de Quèbec, the Japan-Canada Fund, the Laidlaw Foundation, and the Ontario Arts Council. Having lived in Vancouver and Montreal, Don Druick currently lives with artist Jane Buyers in Elmira Ontario, a small village 125 km west of Toronto. Don Druick’s previous works include the award-winning plays Where is Kabuki?, Through The Eyes, Lie Doggo, and the hit CBC radio series Recipe for Murder. He is presently working on a novel entitled The Name We Didn’t Know.


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These plays clustered about the themes of the fragility of love and the ephemerality of life. TULIP (2006). Commissioned and developed by Nightswimming Theatre. Set in the madness of 17th Century Holland during the spectacular and frighteningly strange Dutch obsession with tulip bulbs, TULIP is a wild play about greed, beauty, deceit and botany. The bubble bursts; within days, many are ruined. Starvation and poverty ensue. Adrift in a sea of menacing shadows, the characters of TULIP must now desperately try to reconstruct their shattered lives with only the broken mirror of their hopes and dreams to guide them. WILDEST DREAMS (2013). Developed by Nightswimming Theatre & Playwrights Workshop Montrèal. Poor old Jack. It just keeps going bad. Is that any way to have a life, thinks he? Would it rain?, he wondered, gazing fearfully into the dark grey sky. It smelt like rain. A conspiracy of nature? Its no good – Audrey’s screwing around. And nobody cares. And nothing makes any sense. WILDEST DREAMS is the story of middle-aged love, or love past middle-age, or the failure of this love. ALL THINGS AT ONCE (2019). Developed by Playwrights Workshop Montrèal. A contemporary lamination, an elegy for the authenticity of experience, and for re-claiming one’s own life. Which, after all, is the same as love. ALL THINGS AT ONCE features a giant Gulliver, dancing cows, ferocious boundaries, counterfactual history, and shocking deaths. The protagonist, the poet Byron – his delusion (not always charming but somehow courageously engaging) – drives him to seek out a frighteningly desperate truth to the raw reality of his life. A life where love and loss predominate the landscape.

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Details

Dimensions:

225 Pages
8in * 5in * 1in
1lb

Published:

March 15, 2021

Country of Publication:

CA

Publisher:

DC Books

ISBN:

9781927599549

Featured In:

All Books

Language:

eng

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