Pick Up a Play for World Theatre Day

Have you ever read a play? I’ll admit I hadn’t before I started working with the Canadian publishers who make up the members of the LPG. It’s a different experience than reading a novel but, I think, it is just as fulfilling a reading experience, especially for those who like great characters and a compelling plot in their fiction.

Since today is World Theatre Day we thought it would be the perfect opportunity to introduce you to some plays that are available for your reading pleasure right now.

We have several members that publish plays on a regular basis so we have a great cross section of the Canadian theatre scene. On with the show!

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Sequence by Arun Lakra, published by Playwrights Canada Press

Think you’re lucky? Then this is the play for you. Theo has been named Time Magazine’s Luckiest Man Alive. For twenty consecutive years he has successfully bet double or nothing on the Super Bowl coin toss. And he’s getting ready to risk millions on the twenty-first when he is confronted by Cynthia, a young woman who claims to have figured out his mathematical secret.

Stem-cell researcher and professor Dr. Guzman is on the verge of a groundbreaking discovery. She’s also learned that one of her students has defied probability to get all 150 multiple-choice questions wrong on his genetics exam, but it’s not until he shows up to her office in the middle of the night that she’s able to determine if it’s simply bad luck.

The two narratives intertwine like a fragment of DNA to examine the interplay between logic and metaphysics, science and faith, luck and probability. Belief systems clash, ideas mutate, and order springs from chaos. With razor-sharp wit and playful language, Sequence asks, in our lives, in our universe, and even in our stories, does order matter?

An Almost Perfect Thing by Nicole Moeller, publisher by Playwrights Canada Press

What is “truth”? Do we each have our own “truth”? Greg is a once-respected journalist searching for a high-profile story that will help revive his career. Chloe is the missing girl he wrote about six years earlier who has just returned home to a world she no longer recognizes. Instead of leading police to her captor, Chloe turns to Greg to share her story. Unfortunately for him, Chloe won’t provide names or locations, and instead dictates exactly how the story should be told.

But Chloe has become an international celebrity—both respected and scrutinized by the public—and they all want to know, who is her kidnapper? Why is she protecting him? When Greg begins to question whether truth and fiction have collided, he takes matters into his own hands, in spite of the drastic consequences. Even if that means coming face to face with Chloe’s abductor.

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If non-fiction is more your thing, we also have some great books about Canadian theatre history!

Our Kind of Work by Dwayne Brenna, published by Thistledown Press

Twenty-fifth Street Theatre Players was established in 1972 as an artists’ collective under the direction of the enigmatic Andras Tahn. The company would become the first professional theatre company in Saskatoon, and the legacy it would leave would be nationally acclaimed. But as Brenna details in this succinct genesis of the Theatre, how it managed its personality conflicts, confronted its obstacles of inadequate funding, and grappled with the shifting of its artistic vision makes this account of 25th Street Theatre a unique and original history.

The book offers photographs of Theatre personalities both onstage and in the dressing rooms, but it is the story of the theatre’s own personality, its small, youthful beginnings, its risky devised performances, its original scripts, and its improvised collective creations with famed icons such as Theatre Passe Muraille’s Paul Thompson that give this book its edge.

Emry’s Dream: Greystone Theatre in Photographs and Words by Dwayne Brenna, published by Thistledown Press

It was both providence and necessity that created Canada’s and the Commonwealth’s first degree-granting drama department at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. Born out of the University’s Dramatic Society that flourished in the first three decades of the Twentieth Century, the Greystone Theatre emerged to become a force in theatre development and a prominent shaper in the family tree of Canadian theatre.

Known for its program range — from classic repertory to cutting-edge new plays — it continues to this day to teach and inspire theatre production, management, artistic direction, and acting. Its history is a fascinating amalgam of anecdote, commentary, and biography that show its contribution to the cultural evolution of Canadian theatre in the last century.

The Opening Act: Canadian Theatre History 1945-1953 by Susan McNicoll, published by Ronsdale Press

The conventional opinion is that professional Canadian theatre began in 1953 with the founding of the Stratford Festival. But Susan McNicoll asks how this could be, when the majority of those taking the stage at Stratford were professional Canadian actors. To answer this question, McNicoll delves into the period to show how in fact the unbroken chain of Canadian professional theatre began just after World War II, when a host of theatre people decided that Canada needed its own professional theatre groups.

Drawing on personal interviews with many of the actors and directors active in the period after the war, McNicoll explores the role of such companies as Everyman in Vancouver, New Play Society in Toronto, Canadian Repertory Theatre in Ottawa, Théâtre du Nouveau Monde in Montreal, and many more. In 1953 the Stratford Shakespeare Festival ultimately showed the world that Canada was ready for centre stage, but the real birth of professional theatre happened in the years leading up to that moment.

The volume includes over 45 photos of scenes from plays of the time and selections from McNicoll’s interviews with such luminaries as Christopher Plummer, Joy Coghill, Amelia Hall and Herbert Whittaker.

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Want more drama? Check out our World Theatre Day Pinterest Board!

_______Edited from the original post, published on the LPG blog