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.
As much as theatre creates fictional human beings, basing the fiction of a play in the life of a real historical figure lends that story a lot of weight. It can never escape the gravity of that person’s heritage, the mystery of piecing together the emotions behind the actual events of a life.
Ottawa Little Theatre brings us a few new fall selections, starting with Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee. This famous play tells the story of the Scopes Monkey Trial. The theatre then moves on to the dark thriller Dr. Cook’s Garden by famed writer Ira Levin, from October 18 to November 5. Their fall lineup concludes with the comedy I Hate Hamlet, from November 29 to December 17.
As director and actor David Bernstein describes it, Tim Crouch’s England is a play that exists on the border of theatre and the conscious exploration of what theatre is. It doesn’t enforce the idea of performance, but rather strips it away as much as possible. In between telling a very classical story, the script challenges our conception of “a show.”
The summer theatre season in the city looks to be varied and lush. The first thing on your summer plate is This Is What Happens Next, a show from the marvellous, mercurial performer and writer Daniel MacIvor – an honest-to-goodness star in the world of Canadian drama. It’s at the GCTC now until June 12.
Daniel MacIvor is one of Canada’s most respected theatrical artists. Widely renowned as both a writer and performer, he built his early career on stunning, engrossing one-man plays before leaving the genre to take up different challenges. This Is What Happens Next will be his return to the one-man-show format after years of sabbatical. When asked why he moved back into this kind of writing and performing, MacIvor readily admitted that it’s simply where his life led him. “I didn’t have a choice,” he said.