Another Home Invasion
The elderly Jean cares for her ailing husband Alec and has everything under control until an encounter with a stranger begins a nerve-wracking week. This powerful one-act drama deals with one senior’s story and what happens to her peaceful life when it is disrupted.
Photo: Talon Book's cover for Another Home Invasion.
|

|
Homechild
Homechild explores a Scottish family’s estrangements and
reconnections as an uprooted daughter returns to Glengarry County in
eastern Ontario from Toronto. Evoking focused and magnificently
nuanced portraits of four incomplete humans wounded by time, it leads
its viewers to an near-unnoticed corner of history and through
history’s repercussions.
Photo: CanStage's promotional poster for Homechild.
|
|
|
The Shape of a Girl
Loosely based on the fatal real-life beating of a
fourteen-year-old outcast in Victoria, The Shape Of A Girl moves
beyond any individual tragedy and draws the audience to ask themselves truly hard question—why are humans so willing to sit back as the unthinkable unfolds? What can we embrace to undo the worst parts of our nature?
Photo: Jenny Young in The Shape of a Girl (2001).
|

|
|
Little Sister
Little Sister follows a handful of high-school students through a
turbulent chapter of their lives, examining the teenage preoccupation
with self-image and presenting a hauntingly clear portrayal of eating
disorders. Despite its willingness to investigate profound problems,
Little Sister never loses sight of the laughter that carries us
through them.
Photo: Tamara Gorski, Sanjay Talwar and Laurie Fraser in Little Sister, Tarragon Theatre (1992).
|
|
|
The Hope Slide
Throughout The Hope Slide’s intricate single-act monologue, memory
reshapes the boundaries of time as an actor’s past overwhelms her
present. By recounting the stories of three Doukhabor martyrs whose
lives and deaths have always fascinated her, she permits the audience
to enter her personal history.
Photo: Sarah Orstein in The Hope Slide, Tarragon Theatre (1992). Photo by Lydia Pawelak.
|
|
|
Amigo's Blue Guitar
Transcending traditional messages of hope and despair, foreignness
and familiarity, Amigo's Blue Guitar presents a nuanced and
challenging evocation of refugees' spirits. As one character flees a
history of torture in Central America, another's history as a draft
dodger uncovers itself to sit uneasily with the present, provoking a
reexamination of what it means to escape our demons.
Photo: Chris Shore and David Fox in Amigo's Blue Guitar, Tarragon Theatre (1990).
|
 |
|
Toronto, Mississippi
While this is a play about the power of family and love, it is finally a play about self-destruction and creation. At its heart is Jhana, whose character begs the question whether the other characters—her mother, a boarder in her house, and her Elvis-Impersonator father—are any less handicapped than she is. She's good company—funny, driven, passionate and yearning for the same things those around her yearn for—if they can get over their preconceptions about the mentally handicapped and give her the space to achieve her dreams.
Photo: Jim Warren and Brook Johnson in Toronto, Mississippi, Tarragon Theatre (1987).
|
 |
|
Jewel
Jewel invokes the torment of a young woman widowed in the
real-life sinking of a Newfoundland-based oil rig. In a grippingly
honest and articulate monologue addressed to her dead husband, she
searches through miseries and comes across the unexpected resilience
of her own heart.
Photo: Joan MacLeod in Jewel, Tarragon Theatre (1987).
|
 |
|
2000
Approaching absurdity while retaining total familiarity, 2000
updates and meditates on an ancient paradox: the shifting boundary
lines between nature and civilization. As contemporary Vancouver
encroaches on the earth that bears it, a bestial mountain-man wanders
into the lives of a troubled city-living family, changing everything.
Photo: Alan Williams and Frances Hyland in 2000, Tarragon Theatre (1996). Photo by Cylla Von Tiedemann.
|
 |