NAC celebrates the life and important work of playwright David French

David French is quite possibly the most important Canadian playwright you’ve never heard of. In the 60s a wave of writers started to push against the staid, classical nature of Canadian theatre. Their desire was for playwrights to write about Canadian lives for Canadian audiences, and the most successful of these was a young man from Toronto named David French. “David was the first to prove that there was an audience for plays written by Canadians, for stages across the country,” says Michael Wallace of the Canadian Theatre Museum.

Assuming that Canadians wanted more from their theatre, French wrote a series of semi-autobiographical plays about a family that left Newfoundland for Toronto. The series became an enormous success. According to Wallace, he was “one of the playwrights that broke the ice” for Canadian theatre, but “his influence is broader than that. One of the things that surprised me about … this exhibit is that you see how many countries his plays have been seen in.”

Wallace is curating a small exhibit at the National Arts Centre, on display as part of the Culture Days national festival and in parallel with the NAC production of Salt-Water Moon. This play is one of French’s most enduring and entertaining dramas. It tells the story of the courtship of two Newfoundland teenagers, but “in its specificity it becomes a very universal story,” according to Wallace.

The exhibit itself will feature letters, photographs and some early drafts of French’s writing, even writing published when French was a teenager. A fascinating glimpse at how a young man from a household that carried few books but the Bible became one of Canada’s most renowned writers.

Salt-Water Moon
NAC Theatre
October 18 to November 5

David French: Writing Home
Theatre Foyer at the NAC
September 30 to November 6

As seen in the Ottawa XPress, Sept 29, 2011: http://ottawaxpress.ca/2011/09/29/david-french-writing-home-exhibition-the-groundbreaker/