The Governor' General Literacy Drama Winners

A suicidal young man is rescued by a white dog who gives him a mission: save his father from death. His mission flounders until the dog's owner helps him by bringing his reluctant mother back into the family.

Winner of the 1984 Governor General's Literary Award for Drama.

When Catherine returns home on the eve of ceremonies honouring her physician father, she unleashes a kaleidoscope of memories as father and daughter attempt to lay old ghosts to rest. While public service has been the keynote of Doc’s life it has covered the private anguish of a family in crisis. Interacting with figures from the past (including wife and mother Bob, best friend Oscar, and Catherine herself as the young child Katie), the characters retrace and relive past triumphs and tragedies, culminating in Bob’s death. Humour leavens this drama of a father and daughter’s struggle to love, to forgive, and to understand in order to go on. Doc was first produced in 1984 at Theatre Calgary and has since been produced widely elsewhere. The play received the Governor General’s Award for Drama in 1986.

It is 1859, and under the leadership of progressive Czar Alexander II, Russia is rushing pell-mell from the 11th century to the 19th. Serfdom has been abolished, and something approaching parliamentary democracy has been installed. Arkady, a fresh college graduate, proceeds with his friend Bazarov, a charismatic nihilist, to the estate of his father, a down-at-the-heels gentleman farmer. It appears as though dad and the housekeeper have just had a child, and dad is deeply in love - although their difference in class makes marriage impossible to contemplate. Arkady, enraptured with the new thought he learned at college, is eager to impact the New Russia, though he has no idea how. Bazarov, who has burnished his fashionable cynicism to a near-blinding sheen, has resolved to say or think nothing which is not 'useful.' It is surprising, still, how talkative he is. As we learn only at the end of the first Act, Arkady's uncle Pavel, a Europeanized dandy, has begun to stalk Bazarov's mistress, Anna - because he was in love with Anna's late mother.

Book by Thompson, Judith

In this exuberant comedy, MacDonald asks, What if Desdemona and Juliet were allowed to live? Constance Ledbelly, a tweedy academic, has ghostwritten the papers of her mentor for years, when suddenly he announces he's marrying a rival. Escaping into her research, Constance decodes the Gustav Manuscript, and discovers a pair of comedies that she believes are the source for Shakespeare's ***Othello*** and ***Romeo and Juliet***. Transported into the world of her theory, she comes face-to-face with Desdemona and Juliet and discovers that, far from shrinking violets, they are hellions full of surprises. What follows is a riotous retelling of theatrical legend that brings Constance out of her gloom and straight into a new and confident self.

A college student's life is given meaning when he chooses to sponsor Elias, a Salvadoran refugee, as a class project. When Elias arrives, his hosts, Sander and his family, learn what it means and feels like to be a refugee and how to relate to someone who has endured such intense personal grief. The warmth and humour of the characters invite us to embrace the situation, be moved by it, threatened by it, and to consider how we would react.

Book by Mighton, John

"Fronteras Americanas recreates one person{u2019}s struggle to construct a home between two cultures, while exploding the images and constructs built up around Latinos and Latin America. This one-person play works through bold juxtapositions and satiric reference points: Simón Bolívar and Speedy Gonzales; Columbus and Fodor{u2019}s travel guides; Ricky Ricardo and the Latin Lover; La Bamba and Placido Domingo; Carlos Fuentes and American drug-war movies. Verdecchia twirls stereotypes and clichés, offers comparative histories, examines myths and mysticism, and provides lessons in language and dancing. In this follow-up to the Governor General's Award-winning original play (first published in 1993), the Border trope is reconsidered in a twenty-first-century context, taking into account accelerated globalization and new material and economic realities"--Page 4 of cover.

Frank, having dedicated his life to the unremarkable, and Walker, paranoid since being struck by lightning at age three, attempt to flee from each other and end up following each other instead. They find themselves in a run-down hotel operated by deaf and misdirected Willy and blind Alice, who has a murderous dislike for visitors. Morris Panych's brilliant tale reminds us all that fear can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"A young soldier has been convicted of war crimes committed during a genocide. Like a good soldier, he obeyed his surperiors only to find that, at the conclusion of war, he became the scapegoat for crimes "everyone was doing." As he is about to be executed, a mysterious woman who is both his saviour and his tormentor offers him freedom-- at a price."

The welfare cheques don't arrive and the people of this fictional First Nation are forced to take control of their lives.

A young actor from the big city lives with two aging bachelor farmers to gather stories about rural life. The farmers' lives are irrevocably altered when art attempts to imitate life and the line between truth and fiction is crossed.

Winner of the 1999 Governor General's Literary Award for Drama

"The Harps of God poses the question, what does it take to survive? How does an individual find the will to survive in a hopeless and absurd scenario? Beliefs that the men relied on to survive in their isolated fishing villages are put to the test on the desolate icefield under a curtain of cold. In the end, their prejudices, their doubts, their bleak individual histories, their familial conflicts, their entrenched loyalties, and their myopic beliefs are what destroy many of the men's will to survive.". "Those who are angry, hateful, vengeful, and hopeless lose the courage or strength to survive. What they think will protect and save them becomes the means to their death. But those who accept the impossible and develop a particular urge to defy it; those who have a cultivated personal vision, an inclusive moral system, an understanding of contradiction, an ability to love, and a compassion for humanity; those are [the] survivors."--BOOK JACKET.

"In the fall of 1918, as soldiers return from the battlefield, a world devastated by four years of war is suddenly hit by a mysterious and deadly plague--the "Spanish" flue. The illness strikes not only the young and the elderly, but also people in the prime of their lives. The rapid progression toward mortality brings home the terror, the panic, and the sense of helplessness of World War I--more people die of this epidemic than are killed in battle throughout the war. As fear of the dreaded flu gebins to fill the town is quarantined in an attempt to keep the illness out. Trains are forbidden to stop and the town's perimeter is sealed. Mail from overseas, feared to be carrying the deadly virus, is gathered and burned. When the disease nevertheless descends upon the town , the citizens begin to turn on each other as they attempt to find a scapegoat for the crisis"--P.[4] of cover.

A scientist who enhances life with his work and knowledge but discovers too late that knowledge in the wrong hands brings death. The ideal of science--to serve humanity--is shown in sharp contrast against the reality of political will, nationalism and war. Chance, pride, ego and passion collide in this play based on the life and work of Nobel Laureate Dr. Fritz Haber, who risked everything for a country that never accepted him, but used his work to murder millions.--Publisher's note.

"Mighton's most accessible play...beautifully told."--Stage and Page Two nursing home residents rekindle what might have been a wartime romance. 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? John Mighton is a Dora, Chalmers and Governor General's Literary Award for Drama winner.

"Never Swim Alone: 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: 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." "You Are Here: You are about to meet Alison, who searches her life for meaning in this play. In a series of luminous moments and 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: 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." "A Beautiful View: A play about joy and misery, misunderstandings and connections, and how one moment can alter the whole world; in short, a play about love. A Beautiful View plays out the story of the relationship between two women, M and L - how they came together and how they've drifted apart. As M and L embark on a journey to find new scenarios for the rest of their lives, the simple truth of their lives is revealed."--Jacket.

A public tragedy shatters a working class family in Montreal. Struggling to survive the aftermath, Benoit and Kathleen do everything they can to help their beloved son Jean cope with guilt and rage. . .but will it be enough? This searing Drama on courage, heroism, and despair explores the long public shadow that private family violence casts.

"*Where the Blood Mixes* is meant to expose the shadows below the surface of the author’s First Nations heritage, and to celebrate its survivors. Though torn down years ago, the memories of their Residential School still live deep inside the hearts of those who spent their childhoods there. For some, like Floyd, the legacy of that trauma has been passed down through families for generations. But what is the greater story, what lies untold beneath Floyd’s alcoholism, under the pain and isolation of the play’s main character?" (From the publisher)

Bold and poetic. Winner of the 2012 Governor General's Literary Award for Drama.