Canadian Plays by Playwright:
M
Welcome to the Canadian Plays section where you will find plays published
in English from across Canada and plays in translation from
French Canada. Plays
are listed by playwright, by last name.
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Canadian Anthologies
If you are unsure of the author's name, please to to our search
engine and enter the title of the work you are interested in.
Isolated: Two Plays
Greg MacArthur
In Get Away, a strange malaise is leaving people listless and apathetic. David escapes to a cabin in the woods, where he discovers two hauntingly beautiful teenagers. Part fairytale and part horrorshow, Get Away is a haunting look at the destructive nature of longing and our desperate need for love. In Recovery, people around the world are addicted to a mysterious susbstance. Following three residents of a recovery facility in Antarctica, Recovery is a subtle and unsettling play of Orwellian proportions about the commodification of fear, the oppression of the individual and the blinding consequences of a medicalized society. Softcover, 156 pp. $17.95.
Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning
Juliet)
Ann-Marie MacDonald
"Clever, pointed and entertaining...
this play is one of the wildest and woolliest feminist reappraisals
that the theater has seen, and one of the most intellectually ambitious." The
Globe and Mail. $17.95.
The Attic, the Pearls & Three Fine
Girls
Ann-Marie MacDonald
Jayne is a bisexual corporate shark, Jojo
is a university professor obsessed with Brecht, and Jelly is an eccentric
artist who loves boxes. A romp through the attic in the home of their recently
deceased father reminds the Fine sisters of their childhood and forces them
to redefine their future together. $12.95.
Nigredo Hotel
Ann-Marie MacDonald
A stressed-out neuro-surgeon goes off the highway in his jaguar and
checks into a seedy hotel, deserted but for the bizzare woman who
seems to run the joint and seems to know more about him than he knows
himself. M-1 (baritone), F-1. (soprano) 22 pp. $10.95.
Clue in the Fast Lane
Ann-Marie MacDonald
A spoof of the Nancy Drew mystery genre. Capable Nancy Prew finds herself drawn into
mysterious circumstances as she is jettisoned into the future. M-3, F-3. pp. $15.95.
With Bated Breath
Bryden MacDonald
This is the provocative tale of Willy, a troubled but charismatic gay kid who flees Cape Breton Island for Montreal with hopes of forgetting a newly broken heart by starting a new life in the big city. There, hopelessly awkward and naive, caught up in the cynical and brutalizing cash-economy of the city's red light district, he retreats ever further into a world of fantasy and anonymity, and soon goes missing without a trace. Softcover, 127 pp. $17.95.
Whale Riding Weather
Bryden MacDonald
Nominated for the 1994 Governor General's Award for Drama. Lyle took auto into his
home. Now Auto brings home Jude. M-3 127 pp. $16.95.
The Weekend Healer
Bryden MacDonald
Lindalou is packing up to return to Cape Breton after visiting her mother for the
first time in five years. When Lindalou's 16-year-old son steps out for a pack of
cigarettes and doesn't return, she fears the worst. M-1, F-2. 108 pp. $16.95.
Divinity Bash / Nine Lives
Bryden MacDonald
This play struts and frets its absurdities on a stage of collapsing
and colliding walls; between the hell that is the here and now of
the late 20th century and the possibility of a heaven far off at the horizon
where the sea meets the sky like the converging pages of an open book. A play
for five men, three women, and one hermaphrodite. 128 pp. $16.95.
Missing
Florence Gibson MacDonald
Evelyn MacMillam, wife and mother of three, has vanished without a trace. When Detective Carol Seaforth is brought in to investigate, the MacMillan's rural, Southern Ontario town is turned upside down to uncover the truth behind Evelyn's disappearance. As Carol grows closer to Evelyn's husband and withdraws from her own marriage, long-hidden secrets bubble to the surface, eventually bringing the investigation to a diner on the outskirts of London, Ontario. Softcover, 94 pp. $16.95.
Whereverville
Josh MacDonald
Newfoundland: between 1954 and 1975, the Federal and Provincial
governments brought about the move of over 300 communities and
30,000 people. Set in a one-room school house during the decisive
evening of the community's vote on whether to stay or leave, Josh
MacDonald's play is an intriguing homage to Brecht's The
Caucasion Chalk Circle. It shows a community's struggle to
give up what they hold most dear. Softcover, 96 pp. $15.95.
Halo
Josh MacDonald
When an image of Jesus appears on the side of a Tim Horton's restaurant
in Nately, Nova Scotia, life is forever changed. The town's inhabitants
are challenged to ask difficult questions about faith, life and love with
sometimes moving, sometimes hilarious results. M-4, F-3. 127 pp. $16.95.
The Birds
Gwendolyn MacEwen
$14.95.
Fishwrap
David Macfarlane
In the age of job insecurity, few have a more tenuous hold on employment than
the freelance newspaper writer. Fewer still have bigger egos. In Fishwrap,
comedy and anger, defiance and lonely bewilderment are woven together in a monologue
that continually bursts beyond the confines of a single character. A writer and
his voices mourn the loss of what seems to be everything. M-1 Softcover, 53 pp.
$15.95.
Daniel MacIvor
One Voice: House & Here Lies Henry
Daniel MacIvor
Angry, hilarious, personal and wildly entertaining, House and Here Lies Henry are two of the most celebrated solo works by award winning playwright Daniel MacIvor. Softcover, 89 pp. $16.95.
His Greatness
Daniel MacIvor
Three men, a great American playwright, his trusted and loyal assistant, and a young Canadian street hustler, find themselves together for two days in a hotel room in Vancouver. This is the story about the nature of life in a created world. 2 F / 3 M. Softcover, 80 pp. $16.95.
I Still Love You: Five Plays by Daniel MacIvor
Daniel MacIvor
Never Swim Alone is a competition. "If you let it, compassion
will kill desire. Especially the desire to be first. And being first, my friends,
is the point". The Soldier Dreams is a darkly comic play
about life, death and grief. As a young man, David lies dying of AIDS as his
family gathers around his bed trying to understand his delirious mutterings.
While the living struggle to find the meaning in David's dying words, MacIvor
takes the audience inside David's imagination to recapture significant moments
in his life. In You Are Here, You are about to meet Alison,
who searches her life for meaning. In a series of luminous encounters, we're
drawn into Alison's world: love that fades, hopes that die, and enduring friendship
that offers the promise of redemption. In On It is a spiralling
narrative about a dying man trying to make plans for the end, a pair of lovers
trying to make it work and two men trying to make a play. A world where accidents
happen. A story about control. A play that keeps its options open. Softcover,
250 pp. $29.95.
Marion Bridge
Daniel MacIvor
Three women in their thirties come "home" to Cape Breton to be
with their dying mother. Each is trying to reconcile what they have
become with what they thought they wanted out of life and with what
they thought their parents wanted for them. Nothing, of course, has turned
out the way anyone imagined it would. M-1, F-4. Softcover, 127 pp. $18.95.
Cul-de-sac
Daniel MacIvor
In his latest collaboration with Daniel Brooks, MacIvor plays the role of Leonard,
who narrates the events leading up to his murder while trying to understand them
himself. Through the course of the play, we peer behind the curtains of his neighbourhood
as MacIvor plays the multiple characters who bare witness to Leonard's life and
death. With an introduction by Daniel Brooks. Softcover, 80 pp. $15.95.
In On It
Daniel MacIvor
A spiralling narrative about a dying man trying to make plans for the end,
a pair of lovers trying to make it work and two men trying to make a play. "...in
addition to being immensely entertaining, it also happens to challenge our
perceptions of reality, identity and evanescence of existence." -- Philadelphia
Inquirer. $12.95.
The Soldier Dreams
Daniel MacIvor
A play about love and death, family and meaning. Winner of two Dora Mavor Moore
Awards. " Daniel MacIvor's plays have been labeled everything from postmodern
to metatheatrical, but these are cold terms that do nothing to capture the
warm, accessible soul of a writer whose honesty and compassion for both audiences
and his characters is at the heart of all his work, including The Soldier
Dreams." -- Variety. $12.95.
House Humans
Daniel MacIvor
Winner of the 1991 Chalmers Canadian Play Award, House centres around Victor
and his short takes on the walking wounded that illustrate man's inhumanity
to himself. $13.95.
Here Lies Henry
Daniel MacIvor and Daniel Brooks
A man alone in a room with a mission to tell you something you
don't already know. "A dazzling impressive combination of off-the-wall contemplation,
mordant wit, and razor-sharp timing." -- The Independent, London,
UK. $12.95.
Never Swim Alone & This Is A Play
Daniel MacIvor
Two from MacIvor, one a competition and the other a play about
a play. $15.95.
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