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Description
Canada’s top playwright sears the page with three new darkly comic plays that denounce political culture, individualism, and the accompanying moral depravity. The title play, Dead Metaphor, examines the collision of a politician’s personal and professional lives, complicated by a son’s return from Afghanistan. In The Ravine, a mayoral candidate learns that his ex-wife is living in a gully nearby and wants to put a hit on him. The Burden of Self-Awareness has money at the centre of a dramatic conflict of values. Each of the three plays is populated by characters trying to navigate the increasingly blurred lines of what’s right and wrong – trying to always stay informed, alert, and ready to act for the common good. Or just to get even.
Contributor Notes
George F. Walker has been one of Canada’s most prolific and popular playwrights since his career in theater began in the early 1970s. His first play, The Prince of Naples, premiered in 1972 at the newly opened Factory Theatre, a company that continues to produce his work. Since that time, he has written more than twenty plays and has created screenplays for several award-winning Canadian television series.
Part Kafka, part Lewis Carroll, Walker’s distinctive, gritty, fast-paced comedies satirize the selfishness, greed, and aggression of contemporary urban culture. Among his best-known plays are Gossip (1977); Zastrozzi, the Master of Discipline (1977); Criminals in Love (1984); Better Living (1986); Nothing Sacred (1988); Love and Anger (1989); Escape from Happiness (1991); Suburban Motel (1997, a series of six plays set in the same motel room); and Heaven (2000). Since the early 1980s, he has directed most of the premieres of his own plays.
Many of Walker’s plays have been presented across Canada and in more than five hundred productions internationally; they have been translated into French, German, Hebrew, Turkish, Polish, and Czechoslovakian.
During a ten-year absence, he mainly wrote for television, including the television series Due South , The Newsroom , This Is Wonderland , and The Line , as well as for the film Niagara Motel (based on three plays from his Suburban Motel series). Walker returned to the theatre with And So It Goes (2010).
Awards and honours include Member of the Order of Canada (2005); National Theatre School Gascon-Thomas Award (2002); two Governor General’s Literary Awards for Drama (for Criminals in Love and Nothing Sacred); five Dora Mavor Moore Awards; and eight Chalmers Canadian Play Awards.
Editorial Reviews
PRAISE FOR THE RAVINE:
“filled with clever lines and moments as well as death, desperation, love, treachery and opportunity.”
– Descant blog
PRAISE FOR THE RAVINE:
“a gritty, dark comedy … Brimming with timely political commentary”
– Today Magazine
PRAISE FOR DEAD METAPHOR
“gritty, grungy and in your face. Its humour drips like drops of liquid tranquillizer designed to soothe undercurrents of lethal pain. While the play’s mind-numbing rage fuels anger, its excoriating comedy leaves you breathless. … Did I say Walker’s work is threatening and provocative, theatre that ought to be seen? Well, it is. The language is unremittingly rough, but true. These people talk like they think.”
– Hamilton Spectator
PRAISE FOR DEAD METAPHOR
“funny, disturbing and highly reflective of our drastically divided post-Sept. 11 political climate. The playwright, a master of the theatrical twist, turns conventional wisdom on its head”
– Finger Lakes Times
PRAISE FOR THE RAVINE:
“a dark, dirty good time … gloriously unhinged”
– Niagara Falls Review
PRAISE FOR DEAD METAPHOR
“an important play … there is plenty of raunchy humor (with the emphasis on raunchy, so be prepared), and even a kernel or two of truth, which are more than enough to make your experience worthwhile … while you’ll laugh all night, you might also squirm a little from time to time. I highly recommend the experience.”
– Finger Lakes Times
