Research Catalog

Title

Seven short plays from Theatre Ontario / selected by Theatre Ontario and introduced by Marian Doucette and Skip Shand.

Publication

Toronto : Playwrights Canada Press, 2002.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

• Doucette, Marian.
• Shand, Skip.
• Theatre Ontario. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n2004039179

Description

iv, 283 pages : illustrations; 23 cm

Summary

"Bittergirl is an irrepressibly upbeat comic exploration of abandonment and resilience. It introduces three women, A, B, and C whose somewhat generic man, D, sets the piece in motion by announcing in the first scene that the relationships is over and he is leaving. The women go from shock to grief to anger to relief to vengeance." "Mail-Order Annie is during the 1900s when thousands of Canada's "Lonely Hearts" hoped to find companionship, love and a future through advertisements in a national magazine. Many a prosperous young farmer used this, along with the cost of a train fare, as a vehicle to find himself a hard-working wife and companion." "Derailed is a sharply detailed, often shrewdly comic exploration of collapsing relationships, packaged in a frenetic merger of physical theatre, music, and clown. Four frequently manic characters take a train ride that transforms their tawdry lives into vivid expressionistic extravagance." "Bellies, Knees and Ankles is Women talking to women. The conversations just emerge, encircle, probe, embrace the similarities and analyze the differences. Everyone in the play has secrets, and over the course of the play the audience discovers that each of these four women is engaged in her own search for her personal self." "Suffering Fools is the aftermath of a failed suicide attempt, Rodney's unfailingly loyal friend Bob has decided to exorcise some of Rodney's demons, and to enlighten some of his past and present tormentors, by turning Rodney's life into a memory play, performed by the actual figures from his life story." "Buttonholes in Silk is a daughter coming home to England in hopes of discovering and asserting her own identity, and to break her estrangement with her mother. The two have not spoken since her emigration to Canada, so she enlists the support of her Grandmother and pushes for a joint holiday and reconciliation." "The Terrible False Deception a four-act play about a three-act play which it contains within itself. A play which heaps deception upon deception. Deftly performed with simultaneous flair and control, it has the potential to be both highly entertaining and theatrically intriguing. For some groups it may well be the hit of the season."--BOOK JACKET.

Subject

• Canadian drama > Ontario

Contents

Introduction / Marian Doucette and Skip Shand -- Bittergirl / Annabel Griffiths, Alison Lawrence and Mary Francis Moore -- Mail Order Annie / Carl C. Cashin -- Derailed / Emil Sher -- Bellies, Knees and Ankles / W. A. Hamilton -- Suffering Fools / Herman Goodden -- Buttonholes in Silk / Gail Fricker -- The Terrible False Deception / Rafe Macpherson.

ISBN

0887546420 :

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries