I have been very fortunate in my life in the Canadian theatre. As a dramaturg at Alberta Theatre Projects in Calgary and through my position at the Banff Playwrights Colony at The Banff Centre, I have, since I started, had the opportunity to work with some remarkable people. Canadian playwrights, actors, dramaturgs and directors who are highly respected and whose work dazzles me.
And because I work closely with these artists, I often get to know them. That opportunity isn't something I take for granted, but it also isn't something that I let intimidate me. If I did, I wouldn't be able to do my job. I would just sit quietly in a corner with my mouth gaping most of the time. Not the best dramaturgical bedside manner. I've learned, of course, that these remarkable artists are still people. They worry, they get tired, they have bed head, they wander over to Balzac's for a coffee on a beautiful day in Stratford just like anyone else.
But about five years ago, as I was sitting at a large dinner table at The Banff Centre, I found myself suddenly overwhelmed for a moment, and there I was sitting quietly in the corner with my mouth gaping. I work with a lot of different playwrights, and there are so many whom I care about and whose voices I love to hear. But in this particular moment I was overwhelmed because I was reminded of the first Canadian playwright - the first playwright, really - that I ever cared about. He was sitting right across from me.
It wasn't that I had forgotten about Daniel MacIvor; he's kind of impossible to forget. But what I had forgotten in the many years since I first started caring about theatre was a trip to the Castell Central Library in Calgary when I was sixteen to pick out the first monologue I ever performed in my high school drama class. (Well, the first monologue I actually ever performed was self-written and was from the point of view of Gloria Steinem. It had the word bitch in it and it was exhilarating to say that in front of my Catholic high school class.)
But the first monologue by a real playwright I ever performed I discovered in the Canadian Drama section on the fourth floor of the library. I was running my eye along the shelves: I didn't know any of the playwrights, so I decided that if I liked the title or the cover of the book I would pull the play out and take a closer look at it. There was one that looked really new (the book hadn't really been cracked yet); the cover was black and white; I liked the typeface and the photo on the cover of a man throwing some chairs. It looked intense and kind of wild. And I knew I had to follow up the strong political statement of the Steinem monologue with something really powerful, you know?
So I read House Humans by Daniel MacIvor. I ended up performing a piece from it even though it was a man's monologue. It was probably another youthful critique of gender politics. During the performance, I dried and forgot the words but I still got a good mark. And I decided that I really, really liked the play and really, really liked this Daniel MacIvor guy.
I went on to study drama in university and read more plays, got to know the work of more playwrights, but my heart always returned to Daniel MacIvor. I wrote a paper for Canadian theatre class about his solo work. I can't remember the title or the grade I got, but for some reason I do remember the subtitle: "The anatomy of a MacIvor monologue."
I discovered him in high school, but in university I discovered other people who knew his work, who admired him and who were influenced by him. I learned more about his collaborators, such as Daniel Brooks and Tracey Wright. I saw all of his shows when they came through Calgary and read his work eagerly. When I started working at Alberta Theatre Projects, I discovered that many young Canadian artists have strong feelings for Daniel MacIvor. I am reminded of this every year when dozens of young, well-meaning kids come into the audition room and do awkward versions of the diner monologue from Wild Abandon. It is a rite of passage that is shared by many. He has energized and shaped an entire generation of Canadian theatre artists.
Somehow I had managed in the first part of my career to meet pretty much every playwright I had come to admire except for Daniel MacIvor. When I met him at The Banff Centre I was happy to discover that he is a generous and charming man. But in the weeks before this moment at the dinner table I didn't really think about the huge impression he had made on me. Then, suddenly, as I looked across at him that night over my second dessert, I vividly flashed back to a very particular memory: Daniel's face framed tightly with light on a black stage in the Big Secret Theatre in Calgary.
While I was in university, Daniel had come to Calgary to perform his solo piece Here Lies Henry. Of all his work, it is that piece that will always be my favourite. There was one section in particular that meant a lot to me at that time. When I was twenty. It is the final section of the show, and it begins: "And so, say you die . . . and I know that's a scary thing because you don't know what happens, so I'm going to tell you."
What follows is one the funniest and most moving pieces of writing I have ever read. There were two pieces of dramatic text that I found so bewitching at that time that I remember reading and rereading them whenever I felt like feeling something - and as a twenty-year-old drama student, that was quite often. One was the final monologue from Sonya in Uncle Vanya (the Michael Frayn translation). The other was this section at the end of Daniel MacIvor's Here Lies Henry.
I still run my eyes over that piece often. When I want to feel something, when I want to remember why I fell in love with the theatre, when I want to remember what is possible. And I eagerly await his new work, like The Best Brothers, because his writing still gets me in touch with the things I value most. Daniel MacIvor's work is energizing, spirited, honest, bold, passionate and compassionate. It strives to express the inexpressible inner world of the heart and asks us questions about what it means to live.
Thank you, Daniel, for leading the way. And I say that on behalf of everyone who has ever picked up your plays off a library shelf and discovered their voice through hearing yours.
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