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list price: $18.99
edition:eBook
also available: Paperback
category: Drama
published: Oct 2014
ISBN:9780889229075
publisher: Talonbooks

War Cantata / Child Object

by Larry Tremblay, translated by Keith Turnbull & Chantal Bilodeau

tagged: canadian
Description

War Cantata translated by Keith Turnbull How far will humanity go in its quest for power? Why do we desire to eliminate each other through war? War Cantata looks at ways the impulse for violence is transmitted from one generation to the next; for example, when a father teaches his son hatred to transform him into a soldier impervious to pity. Without focusing on a particular battle or soldier, this harsh, intense, choral text builds the rhythmic power of words to expose war’s spiral toward hatred.

In 2012, SACD (Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques), in partnership with France Culture, awarded War Cantata the Prix SADC for best world play written in French, and CEAD (Centre des auteurs dramatiques) awarded it the Prix Michel-Tremblay for the best play written in Quebec in 2012.

Cast of 2 men and a chorus.

Child Object translated by Chantal Bilodeau With child as a blank page, a man sets about constructing his ideal companion manipulating personality, gender, and body. The child becomes the ultimate consumer good.

Cast of 1 woman and 2 men.

About the Authors

Larry Tremblay


Keith Turnbull


Chantal Bilodeau is a Montréal-born, New York-based playwright and translator whose work focuses on the intersection of science, policy, art, and climate change. She is the founding artistic director of the Arts & Climate Initiative (formerly The Arctic Cycle) and over the past decade has been instrumental in getting the theatre and educational communities, as well as audiences in the US and abroad, to engage in climate action through programming that includes live events, talks, publications, workshops, national and international convenings, and a worldwide-distributed theatre festival. Awards include the Woodward International Playwriting Prize as well as First Prize in the Earth Matters on Stage Ecodrama Playwrights Festival and the Uprising National Playwriting Competition. Her plays and translations have been presented in a dozen countries around the world and she had edited or co-edited three anthologies of short plays about the climate crisis. In 2019, she was named one of “8 Trailblazers Who Are Changing the Climate Conversation” by Audubon Magazine.
Contributor Notes

Larry Tremblay is a writer, director, actor, and specialist in Kathakali, an elaborate dance theatre form which he has studied on numerous trips to India. He has published twenty books as a playwright, poet, novelist, and essayist. Thanks to an uninterrupted succession of new plays (Anatomy Lesson, Ogre, The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi, Les Mains bleues, Téléroman, among others) in production during the 1990s, Tremblay’s work continues to achieve international recognition. One of Quebec’s most versatile writers, Tremblay currently teaches acting at l’École supérieure de théâtre de l’Université du Québec à Montréal.

 

Keith Turnbull served as the artistic director of Theatre Arts programs at the Banff Centre for the Arts from 1993-1999 and was also the co-director of the Banff playRites Colony and director of the Contemporary Opera and Song Training Program from 1997-2000. His career as a director, producer, designer, and dramaturge is highlighted by a commitment to contemporary and new work in both theatre and opera.
In addition, Turnbull has a particular interest in the pedagogy, performance practice, and interpretation of the works of Shakespeare and of other language-based texts. He has directed more than seventy plays at various theatres throughout the world.

Turnbull also founded a First Nations theatre company from which emerged many of Canada’s most noted Native performers. He was the founding co-artistic director of the Toronto Theatre Festival, the president of the Toronto Theatre Alliance as well as a board member of the Canadian Actors’ Equity Association. He has taught at the University of Manitoba, the National Theatre School, the University of Calgary and the Banff Centre for the Arts.

Editorial Reviews

"This is a powerful work, mesmerizing, painful." – Karyne Lefebvre, CBC/Radio-Canada


"It is rough, it's brutal, it comes as a string of gunshots ..."
– Annie-Soleil Proteau, CBC/Radio-Canada


"With War Cantata, Larry Tremblay delivers a great theatrical text that talks about the mechanics of hatred: hard, visceral, and uncompromising ..."– Yves Rousseau, LeQuatrième.com


"With a vocabulary that does not fear ugliness and vulgarity, Larry Tremblay creates a state of emergency without wallowing in pathos. His writing digs into pain while providing relevant reflection. In its happy fusion between emotion and thought, he traces the contours between commitment and poetry ... [between] the weight of savagery and the hardness of a crippled civilization." – Olivier Dumas, Montheatre.qc.ca

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