Book picks similar to
The Magnificent Voyage of Emily Carr by Jovette Marchessault
plays
artists
canlit
in-translation
Woman and Scarecrow
Marina Carr - 2006
What was life? What was love? What else could have been? Full of mordant, bitter humour, this is a passionate threnody from one of Ireland's leading playwrights.Woman and Scarecrow premieres at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in June 2006.
Exit Papers from Paradise
Liam Card - 2012
Forced to take over his father's plumbing business straight out of high school, Isaac's had dreams of attending the University of Michigan that fell by the wayside. However, the unfortunate setback didn't stop him entirely. For the past decade, he has absorbed every medical textbook and journal available to him. For practical experience, Isaac performs surgeries on the wildlife around his house, preparing for the day he attends Michigan. Yet the years continue to pass and Isaac remains stuck in Paradise, Michigan, as a plumber. That is, until this year, when an event pushes him to apply as an undergraduate for the first time. Exit Papers from Paradise is about the gap between the person we are and the person we desperately want to be.www.exitpapers.com
Indian Ink
Tom Stoppard - 1995
More than fifty years later, the artist's son visits Flora's sister in London while her would-be biographer is following a cold trail in India.The alternation of place and period in Tom Stoppard's play (based on his radio play In the Native State) makes for a rich and moving exploration of intimate lives set against one of the great shifts of history, the emergence of the Indian sub-continent from the grip of Empire.Indian Ink was first performed at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford, and opened at the Aldwych Theatre, London, in February 1995.
Teechers
John Godber - 1989
Using the format of an end-of-term play, the new drama teacher's progress through two terms of recalcitrant classes, synical colleagues and obstructive caretakers is reviewed. Disillutioned, he departs for a safer private school.
Tally's Blood: A Playscript for Higher Drama (National Qualifications Curriculum Support)
Ann Marie Di Mambro - 2002
The Madwoman of Chaillot
Jean Giraudoux - 1945
At the Cafe Chez Francis, a group of promoters plot to tear up Paris in order to unearth the oil which a prospector believes he has located in the neighborhood. These grandiose plans come to the attention of The Madwoman of Chaillot who is ostensibly not normal in her mind but who is soon shown to be the very essence of practical worldly goodness and common sense. She sees through the crookedness of the prospector and insists that the world is being turned into an unhappy place by the thieves and those who are greedy for worldly goods and power. At a tea party attended by other "mad" women of Paris, she has brought together representatives of the despoilers of the earth and wreckers of its happiness, and has them tried and condemned to extermination. In a scene which mounts into the realms of high poetic comedy, she sends the culprits one by one, lured by the scent of oil and undreamed-of riches, into a bottomless pit which opens out of her cellar. The exodus of the wicked is accompanied by another and more beautiful miracle: Joy, justice and love return to the world again. "
Cyrano de Bergerac
Edmond Rostand - 1897
Set in Louis XIII's reign, it is the moving and exciting drama of one of the finest swordsmen in France, gallant soldier, brilliant wit, tragic poet-lover with the face of a clown. Rostand's extraordinary lyric powers gave birth to a universal hero--Cyrano De Bergerac--and ensured his own reputation as author of one of the best-loved plays in the literature of the stage.This translation, by the American poet Brian Hooker, is nearly as famous as the original play itself, and is generally considered to be one of the finest English verse translations ever written.
And the Birds Rained Down
Jocelyne Saucier - 2011
One is a young photographer documenting a a series of catastrophic forest fires that swept Northern Ontario early in the century; she’s on the trail of the recently deceased Ted Boychuck, a survivor of the blaze. And then the elderly aunt of the one of the pot growers appears, fleeing one of the psychiatric institutions that have been her home since she was sixteen. She joins the men in the woods and begins a new life as Marie-Desneige. With the photographer’s help, they find Ted’s series of paintings about the fire, and begin to decipher the dead man’s history.A haunting meditation on aging and self-determination, And the Birds Rained Down, originally published in French as Il pleuvait des oiseaux, was the winner of the Prix des Cinq Continents de la Francophonie, the first Canadian title to win this honour. It was winner of the Prix des lecteurs Radio-Canada, the Prix des collégiens du Québec, the Prix Ringuet 2012 and a finalist for the Grand Prix de la ville de Montréal.
The Rez Sisters: A Play in Two Acts
Tomson Highway - 1988
And not just any bingo. It is THE BIGGEST BINGO IN THE WORLD and a chance to win a way out of a tortured life.The Rez Sisters is hilarious, shocking, mystical and powerful, and clearly establishes the creative voice of Native theatre and writing in Canada today.
Hamletmachine and Other Texts for the Stage
Heiner Müller - 1978
Includes: Hamletmachine, Correction, The Task, Quartet, Despoiled Shore, and Gundling's Life. One of the most original theatrical minds of our time, Müller, who resided in East Berlin before his death in 1995, was a frequent collaborator of Robert Wilson.
Les Liaisons dangereuses
Pierre Choderlos de Laclos - 1782
The subject of major film and stage adaptations, the novel's prime movers, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, form an unholy alliance and turn seduction into a game - a game which they must win. This new translation gives Laclos a modern voice, and readers will be able a judge whether the novel is as "diabolical" and "infamous" as its critics have claimed, or whether it has much to tell us about the kind of world we ourselves live in. David Coward's introduction explodes myths about Laclos's own life and puts the book in its literary and cultural context.
Father of the Bride: A Comedy in Three Acts
Caroline Francke - 1948
Banks learns that one of the young men he has seen occasionally about the house is about to become his son-in-law. Daughter Kay announces the engagement out of nowhere. Mrs. Banks and her sons are happy, but Mr. Banks is in a dither. The groom-to-be, Buckley Dunstan, appears on the scene and Mr. Banks realizes that the engagement is serious. Buckley and Kay don't want a "big" wedding just a simple affair with a few friends! We soon learn, however, that the "few" friends idea is out. Then trouble really begins. The guest list grows larger each day, a caterer is called in, florists, furniture movers and dressmakers take over, and the Banks household is soon caught in turmoil.
Those Who Can’t, Teach
Haresh Sharma - 2010
As the teachers struggle daily to nurture and groom, the students prefer to hang out and “chillax”. With upskirting and Facebooking, griping and politicking, school takes on a whole new meaning as the colourful characters struggle to prove that those who can, teach.Written by Singapore’s most prolific playwright Haresh Sharma, Those Who Can’t, Teach was first staged by The Necessary Stage in 1990 to critical acclaim. Twenty years later, Sharma revisits this classic to revitalise it for the Singapore Arts Festival 2010, transforming it into a powerful portrayal of the pressures and challenges facing teachers (and students) in schools in the 21st century.“The play throws up questions on the roles of parents, students and teachers, but does not collapse into an impotent tirade against society. The script is joyous. The laughter is warmly wry, not caustic.” —The Straits Times“Those Who Can’t, Teach does much to do away with the stereotypes and fallacies of the teaching profession.” —The Business Times
Falling Out of Time
David Grossman - 2011
It begins in a small village, in a kitchen, where a man announces to his wife that he is leaving, embarking on a journey in search of their dead son.The man-called simply the "Walking Man" --paces in ever-widening circles around the town. One after another, all manner of townsfolk fall into step with him (the Net Mender, the Midwife, the Elderly Maths Teacher, even the Duke), each enduring his or her own loss. The walkers raise questions of grief and bereavement: Can death be overcome by an intensity of speech or memory? Is it possible, even for a fleeting moment, to call to the dead and free them from their death? Grossman's answer to such questions is a hymn to these characters, who ultimately find solace and hope in their communal act of breaching death's hermetic separateness. For the reader, the solace is in their clamorous vitality, and in the gift of Grossman's storytelling - a realm where loss is not merely an absence, but a life force of its own.