2008/2009
- John and Béatrice
- Plucked, Hammered and Strung
- Blessed Are They
- The Pipeline
- Special Events
- Print Season Calendar
THE PIPELINE
Three new plays. Three public play readings.
Through the white heat of a public presentation the strengths and flaws of a script in development become more transparent.
The Pipeline series comes back to the Bain St-Michel for its third season. A unique opportunity for audience members to voice their opinion on Infinithéâtre's future programming and influence Montréal's cultural landscape. Part of Infinithéâtre's ongoing efforts to bring the best writing to Montréal stages, this year's series will also feature the inaugural winner of our Write-On-Q playwriting contest.
Friday November 28, 2008 at 7pm
THE DAILY MIRACLE
by David Sherman
Marty's back to work after suffering a nervous breakdown; Elizabeth's daughter is sick at home with a babysitter; Carrie uses all her charms to impress as she dreams of a job in television while Benjamin is just trying to get the paper out, all overseen by the ghosts of an industry that used to be. It's another night on the news desk, where a few battle-scarred, overworked copy editors wrestle with fractured syntax and crushed ideals to get the next edition out in the shadow of a marathon corporate management meeting. Tempers frayed from layoffs, cutbacks and corroded ambitions; it's a miracle they can get the paper out at all. A miracle that happens every day.
David Sherman is a journalist, screenwriter and playwright and former playwright in residence at the Centaur Theatre. He has worked at The Montreal Star and The Gazette as a copy boy, music critic, feature writer, reporter and lastly, as a copy editor. He began writing Daily Miracle a few years ago while he was working as an editor on the news desk at The Gazette. This play is a work of fiction, as are the characters, but the true strains and stress of working the desk in today's deteriorating newspaper industry are stranger than fiction.
Saturday November 29, 2008 at 7pm
FATHERLAND
(2008 Pam Dunn Write-On-Q award winner)
by Arthur Holden
Sunday morning in Westmount. Fifteen-year-old Eric Brook is writing a history essay about Uday and Qusay, the sons of Saddam Hussein. His father Joe, a successful accountant, is about to take Eric's reformed drug-addict uncle Victor to see their elderly father at the seniors' residence. It's a quiet, uneventful day... which turns suddenly menacing when Victor reveals that he owes money to a local mobster - money he doesn't have - and the mobster is on his way over to collect. The irresistible force of Victor's desperation confronts the immoveable object of Joe's outrage as young Eric, excluded from the conflict by his father, finds himself drawn to the bright flame of his uncle's recklessness. In the boy's imagination his uncle and father become Uday and Qusay Hussein in the fateful aftermath of the American invasion: two men trapped in a sumptuous house as a mortal enemy approaches. Alternating between the Brook home and the Iraqi villa in which the Hussein brothers have taken refuge, Father Land advances toward twin resolutions: one decreed by history, both by loyalty shot through with spite. It is a story of the debt owed by sons to fathers, by fathers to sons, by blood to blood.
Born in Montreal, Arthur Holden has made his living as an actor and screenwriter in this city for two decades. Onscreen, he has appeared in various film and TV productions including The Aviator, René Lévesque, and the upcoming Québec 1759. Screenwriting credits include the English remake of the hit Quebec series Rumeurs and a made-for-TV movie, Out of Control, due for release in early 2009. Father Land is his first stage play.
Sunday November 30, 2008 at 2 PM
RABBIT RABBIT
by Amy Lee Lavoie
Larry, a paedophilic birthday clown, is on a "date" with Britney, a sixteen-year-old prostitute working for a fetish escort service. If Britney gets another shitty score from a client - she's had a string of bad-luck fours lately - her pimp will put her out on the street. Larry asked for his usual girl, twelve-year-old Sabrina, who wasn't available. He really wanted his regular fix, as he has his sights set on a young girl who he will be seeing next week at a birthday party, his next clown job. He knows what he will do if he doesn't get some relief. It is D-Day in the hotel room. Through embarrassing, traumatic attempts at having sex, and in spite of Britney's nerves and Larry's broken routine, the two characters form a unique bond. The hotel room becomes a confessional for dark secrets and future dreams.
Amy Lee Lavoie is a graduate of the Bishop's University Drama Program and is currently in her second year of the Playwriting Program at the National Theatre School of Canada. Rabbit Rabbit was conceived in her first year at NTS with Brian Drader as dramaturge.