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The Gentleman Clothier
by Norm FosterExperienced tailor Norman Davenport has barely opened the doors to his new clothing store in downtown Halifax when Sophie, an exuberant young woman, barges in looking for work, followed by Patrick, a single father who claims to be handy. Hesitantly Norman hires them both to tie up the last few threads before the grand opening. And whether Norman realizes it or not, he needs help getting into the twenty-first century to cater to the current tastes of his customers. When the shop’s first customer, Alisha Sparrow, a friendly, attractive woman, drops in looking for a suit for her husband, Norman is smitten against his better judgment. His sensible, modest world has become profoundly complicated in less than a week, and Norman longs to live in a simpler time. Unfortunately for him, his life is about to get messier as he wakes to find things are not what they used to be.
Gertrude and Alice
by Evalyn Parry Anna ChattertonVisiting the audience in the present day, Gertrude and Alice come to find out how history has treated them. The couple recounts stories of their forty-year relationship; of meetings with iconic artists and writers; and of Alice’s overwhelming, consuming devotion to Gertrude’s genius. Before they leave, they want to find out what has become of their artistic and cultural influence, and how their lives and work are—or are not—remembered.
Gloria's Guy
by Joan BurrowsIt’s been over twenty years since Guy ditched his high-school sweetheart Gloria at the prom, and they haven’t spoken since. Now he’s a failed LA lawyer, divorced, and working at his brother’s resort in the Muskokas. When a wedding conveniently brings Gloria to the resort for a weekend, Guy is determined to keep his distance. But their high-school friends Eva, Leslie, and Peggy, and Peggy’s mom Jessie—the crew’s former teacher—decide to play matchmakers and reconnect the long-split pair. Between the reunion of old friends, each with their own surprises, Gloria and Guy are pushed together, learning the power of forgiveness, the warmth of opening up to someone, and the possibilities of a rewritten future.
The Good Egg
by Michael Lewis MacLennanThey’re the ultimate downtown couple—attractive, smart, and successful. They have everything they could ever want. Except a child. When bad news points them to alternative methods of conception, they encounter a handsome young art model. He seems like the perfect solution to their problems. But as this unlikely trio gets more intimate, secret agendas surface and threaten to destroy not only their hasty deal, but everything they’ve so carefully built for themselves. From one of Canada’s funniest playwrights, The Good Egg is a penetrating look at timely, controversial issues. Theatrically audacious, it’s also an achingly real and hilarious portrait of three unpredictable people on the brink.
The Good Egg
by Michael Lewis Maclennan Amy Lynn StrilchukThey're the ultimate downtown couple—attractive, smart, and successful. They have everything they could ever want. Except a child. When bad news points them to alternative methods of conception, they encounter a handsome young art model. He seems like the perfect solution to their problems. But as this unlikely trio gets more intimate, secret agendas surface and threaten to destroy not only their hasty deal, but everything they've so carefully built for themselves. From one of Canada's funniest playwrights, The Good Egg is a penetrating look at timely, controversial issues. Theatrically audacious, it's also an achingly real and hilarious portrait of three unpredictable people on the brink.
Good Mother
by Damien AtkinsThe Driver family struggles to cope with an accident that robs them of a mother, leaving them to care for her as she fights to regain her memory. Touching and powerful, Good Mother examines the ties that hold a family together and the crises that draw them apart. A compelling drama by one of Canada's most promising young playwrights. Winner of the 2001 Prism/UBC Creative Writing Department Award
The Goodnight Bird
by Colleen MurphyLilly and Morgan Beaumont are comfortable in their routine until Parker, a homeless man, lands on the balcony of their new condo. After scaring the older couple half to death, he pours himself into the holes of their relationship, agitating them with talk of sex—talk that drives Lilly out into the night and sends Morgan on the road to another heart attack.
The Grandkid
by John LazarusJulius Rothstein and his granddaughter Abby have loved each other from opposite ends of Canada since Abby was born. But now, accepted as a freshman student at the university where Julius teaches, Abby is moving in with him to be close to school and to keep her newly widowed grandfather company. The two must negotiate a new relationship as housemates and friends, which means dealing with issues of youth and age, work and play, activism and apathy, homework and heart attacks, and those three tricky topics: sex, politics, and religion.
The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble
by Beth GrahamIris Trimble is trying to hold it all together. She may very well fly off the face of the earth if she doesn't hang on to the kitchen counter. At least that's how she feels after her mother, Bernice, a lively, recently widowed fifty-nine-year-old breaks the news that she has Alzheimer's. In an effort to cope with the stress, Iris makes her mother's famous Everything That Is Bad For You Casserole, a childhood favourite. Her siblings, on the other hand, are on opposite sides of the spectrum: Sarah, the eldest, irately demands a second opinion, while Peter, the youngest, seems completely unfazed. As for Bernice, she's still as vivacious as ever, always up for a good laugh, and, most of all, ready to finally put herself first.
The Greek Playwright: What the First Dramatists Have To Say To Contemporary Playwrights
by Clem MartiniPicking up where The Blunt Playwright left off, Clem Martini returns to the subject of playwriting, turning his attention to the lessons modern playwrights can learn from the ancient Greeks. Outlining the major playwrights of the era, their major works, and the impact they had on our modern understanding of drama, Martini weaves his direct, informative, and entertaining style through centuries of dramatic evolution to show us exactly what the first dramatists have to say to contemporary playwrights.
Guarded Girls
by Charlotte Corbeil-ColemanThe stories and experiences of three imprisoned women and a guard intertwine in dramatic and dangerous ways, as the psychological destruction that is solitary confinement taunts each of their lives. Nineteen-year-old Sid is transferred to a new prison, finding friendship with her cellmate Brit, but she also forms a complicated relationship with a guard who seems to be watching their every move. In another time, an older inmate named Kit talks to an unseen audience about a coming visitor and how she’ll stop at nothing to see them, even if that means bringing down the entire prison system. In another place, three girls wait as visitors, each one thinking about the complicated positions their mothers are in. Playful and mysterious, Guarded Girls is about the stories we tell to survive, and how the same stories can also destroy us.
Half-Cracked: The Legend of Sissy Mary
by Mary-Colin ChisholmSisters Sissy and Yewina have been on their own for who knows how long exactly. It's just them (and their hens) in a weathered farmhouse miles from town. Their rural, woodsy East Coast community has been losing residents for years, but the almost-forgotten stories have lived on for the sisters in different ways. While Yewina is more guarded and level-headed, dreamer Sissy has a flair for twisting fact with fantasy. When Scott, a folklorist from Scottsdale, Arizona, shows up at their door in hopes of chronicling whispers, he's in for much more of a story than he expected. This unique and quirky ode to folklore storytelling and to small lives lived large illuminates how living our own truths can make us legends.
Half Life
by John MightonTwo nursing home residents, both in their eighties, meet and fall in love, rekindling what might have been a wartime romance. Had they previously met somewhere else under different circumstances? Why is their love so troubling for their children? Indeed, the light at dusk is sometimes warmer and more enveloping than that of the midday sun. Characters navigate between being and appearance, between cowardice and dissoluteness. The award-winning author of Possible Worlds brings us this poetic and moving meditation on identity, aging, and the nature of memory. What shines through when memory fades away?
Halfway There
by Norm FosterThere’s no such thing as a secret in Stewiacke. Not when the gossips meet for coffee every day at the local diner. Vi, Rita, Mary Ellen, and Janine are all as close as can be, and they know everybody’s business. But when Sean, a heartbroken doctor, moves in to take a temporary job at the clinic, he tips the Maritime town that’s famous for being halfway between the North Pole and the equator off its axis. While Sean decides to pursue Janine, it only brings her closer together with her friends, who each have their own messy love lives. Vi just turned down her boyfriend’s proposal, Mary Ellen is tired of doing everything for her husband and sons, Rita just wants to find a date, and Janine already lives with a man she loves a “little bit.” Can everyone find what they’re looking for in Stewiacke? And what happens when someone finds out a secret that managed to be kept hidden? This feel-good comedy from the most-produced playwright in Canada will envelop you in a familiar warm hug that shares the relief of finding your people.
Haven
by Mishka LavigneHavre won the 2019 Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama (French).The play has also been translated into German and Spanish.First produced in French by La Troupe du Jour, Saskatoon, in 2018First produced in English by United Players of Vancouver in January 2022
Hedda Gabler & Sirens: Elektra In Bosnia
by Judith Thompson Cynthia AshpergerIn Hedda Gabler, a moving exploration of female oppression, a recently married Hedda navigates her new identity as a wife and the intense constraints put on her by society. She prefers pistols to cooking and does not care for raising a family. As Hedda fights against the pressures of her new life and her own neuroses, she comes to terms with an untimely choice. Sirens: Elektra in Bosnia is a gripping story about the horrors of collective and personal wars as a family torn apart by death and destruction becomes their own worst enemy. When a deal between Agamemnon and his brother Menelaus goes awry, Iphigenia becomes the blood sacrifice leading to truths her sister Elektra can no longer hide from. Against the backdrop of a family drama, Judith Thompson gives voice to the women who were silenced during the Bosnian War, examining a cultural trauma and its place in our collective history.
HER2
by Maja ArdalIn this poignant meditation on the uneasy relationship between science and the human spirit, a group of women aged nineteen to sixty-three with HER2-related breast cancer are recruited for a clinical drug trial. For some of them the trial is renewed hope; others feel it’s a weary last resort. For Dr. Danielle Pearce, the research scientist in charge of the program, the trial is the most critical moment of her career. Her mission is global, and measured outcomes are her chief concern. But in the chemo room, medical statistics are just background noise as the women gradually form a collective bond through humour and compassion, raising the question, does community positively influence immunity?
Hilda's Yard
by Norm FosterLemonade is for people who use the front door. It’s an exciting summer day in 1956 for Hilda and Sam Fluck. Newly on their own since their thirtysomething children Gary and Janey moved out, they are finally ready to relax. Hilda plans to hang her laundry while Sam goes to buy a shiny new television. What could disturb their simple peace? Turns out doors are merely decoration as Gary and Janey literally fall over the fence into the backyard, looking for help out of sticky situations. Gary has lost his job, is enamoured with his new girlfriend, Bobbi, and running from a bookie named Beverly, while the ever-dependent Janey has unexpectedly left her husband. The family careens into an afternoon of calamity, showing them that ultimately they must celebrate how they can be together rather than apart. Norm Foster’s heartwarming and relatable family comedy proves that there will always be a significant weight to an empty nest.
His Greatness
by Daniel MacIvorThree 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. Inspired by a potentially true story about the great American playwright...
A History of Breathing
by Daniel MacdonaldTwo boats float aimlessly on an ocean that conceals the remains of civilization and history. One boat carries a father and daughter, the last survivors of an unspeakable catastrophe; the other carries the only hope for a new beginning. Daniel Macdonald crafts a stunning tale of myth and reality at the end of the world and at its creation.
Honouring the Strength of Indian Women: Plays, Stories, Poetry (First Voices, First Texts #5)
by Vera ManuelThis critical edition delivers a unique and comprehensive collection of the works of Ktunaxa-Secwepemc writer and educator Vera Manuel, daughter of prominent Indigenous leaders Marceline Paul and George Manuel. A vibrant force in the burgeoning Indigenous theatre scene, Vera was at the forefront of residential school writing and did groundbreaking work as a dramatherapist and healer. Long before mainstream Canada understood and discussed the impact and devastating legacy of Canada’s Indian residential schools, Vera Manuel wrote about it as part of her personal and community healing. She became a grassroots leader addressing the need to bring to light the stories of survivors, their journeys of healing, and the therapeutic value of writing and performing arts. A collaboration by four Indigenous writers and scholars steeped in values of Indigenous ethics and editing practices, the volume features Manuel’s most famous play, "Strength of Indian Women"—first performed in 1992 and still one of the most important literary works to deal with the trauma of residential schools—along with an assemblage of plays, written between the late 1980s until Manuel’s untimely passing in 2010, that were performed but never before published. The volume also includes three previously unpublished short stories written in 1988, poetry written over three decades in a variety of venues, and a 1987 college essay that draws on family and community interviews on the effects of residential schools.
The Hours That Remain
by Keith BarkerDenise has spent the last five years dedicated to uncovering the truth behind her sister Michelle's disappearance. Haunted by loose ends, she begins seeing visions of Michelle, who gradually guides her in the right direction. As Denise's marriage and sanity crumble around her, she remains committed to unearthing an unfathomable truth, and coming to terms with a painfully crucial realization—one she has been desperately avoiding.
House of Many Tongues
by Jonathan GarfinkelDuring the Six Day War, an Israeli general found an abandoned house and made it his home. Forty years later, the general, along with his imaginative and distant son Alex, live in peaceful solitude. When a Palestinian writer shows up with is daughter and lays claim to the house he left decades ago, an internal house war ensues. The bathroom is seized, a fig tree is destroyed, and the basement becomes a shrine in the resulting chaos. Relenting, both men strike a deal to share the house. Somehow these two families are going to have to live together—if they don't kill each other first.
How Black Mothers Say I Love You
by Trey AnthonyClaudette still can’t forgive her mother for leaving. For six years of her childhood, Claudette and her sister Valerie were left with their grandmother while their mother, Daphne, moved from Jamaica to the United States to start a new chapter for their family. But in that time, Daphne remarried and had another daughter. Claudette, now in her late thirties, travels to visit her dying mother in Brooklyn, but that doesn’t stop her anger and abandonment issues from bubbling up. It doesn’t stop Daphne from voicing her opinions on how Claudette lives her life, either. With Daphne, Claudette, and Valerie all under one roof again, each family member is forced to confront their emotions while there’s still time. Though rooted in buried strife and sadness, How Black Mothers Say I Love You is full of humour, love and tenderness as it explores the complicated perceptions of immigrant mothers.
How Do I Love Thee?
by Florence Gibson MacdonaldVictorian poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning are as renowned for their passionate relationship as they are their poetry. How Do I Love Thee? revisits the life of the 19th-century poets from their courtship, carried out entirely through letters, to their sudden elopement to their tumultuous marriage marred by drug addiction and financial strife.