Bøger af George F. Walker

People Live Here is a collection of three exciting new plays by George F. Walker, Canada's king of black comedy and a winner of two Governor General's Literary Awards for Drama. The Chance, Her Inside Life, and Kill the Poor complete the the author's Parkdale Palace trilogy of plays that deal with issues of social justice and ally heart, humour, and a contemporary reflection on human inequalities.

George F. Walker has been one of Canadas most prolific and popular playwrights since his career in theatre began in the early 1970s. Since that time, he has written more than twenty plays and has created screenplays for several award-winning Canadian television series, including Due South, The Newsroom, This Is Wonderland, and The Line, as well as for the film Niagara Motel (based on three plays from his Suburban Motel series).Part Kafka, part Lewis Carroll, Walkers distinctive, gritty, fast-paced comedies satirize the selfishness, greed, and aggression of contemporary urban culture. Awards and honours include appointment as a Member of the Order of Canada (2005); National Theatre School Gascon-Thomas Award (2002); two Governor Generals Literary Awards for Drama (for Criminals in Love and Nothing Sacred); five Dora Mavor Moore Awards; and eight Chalmers Canadian Play Awards.Patrick McDonald is artistic director of Green Thumb Theatre, where he has directed more than seventy-five productions and overseen the commissioning and development of more than fifty new plays for children, teens, and young adults.

Canadas master playwright applies his trademark black humour and incredibly crisp dialogue to the family and multiculturalism. We the Family follows the ripple effects within two culturally and racially divergent families when their children wed.We the Family s list of characters reads like an ethnic joke, which, indeed, it is, at least in part: the son of the main characters, David and Lizzie Kaplan, a JewishIrish Catholic mixed marriage, marries the daughter of Jenny Lee, a Chinese Canadian widow. Theres also a Russian mistress, a Palestinian lover, and a glamorous, possibly fraudulent Italian psychologist, while offstage Pakistani terrorists kidnap the also-offstage honeymooning couple, then sell them to Sicilian gangsters who sell them to Russian gangsters, one of whom turns out to be the father of the Russian mistress (another family).By the end of the play, Walker has deconstructed the dysfunctional Kaplan and Lee families and family love as well. Through the plays pervading treachery, with family members and lovers betraying each other in horrifying ways, he satirizes the hypocrisy of expounding family values while behaving in viciously selfish and self-centred ways. These hyphenated Canadians certainly arent nice, and no amount of sweet-and-sour matzah balls (which the Kaplan matriarch serves at the multicultural wedding reception) can hide the nasty taste.

Canadas top playwright sears the page with three new darkly comic plays that denounce political culture, individualism, and the accompanying moral depravity. The title play, Dead Metaphor, examines the collision of a politicians personal and professional lives, complicated by a sons return from Afghanistan. In The Ravine, a mayoral candidate learns that his ex-wife is living in a gully nearby and wants to put a hit on him. The Burden of Self-Awareness has money at the centre of a dramatic conflict of values. Each of the three plays is populated by characters trying to navigate the increasingly blurred lines of whats right and wrong trying to always stay informed, alert, and ready to act for the common good. Or just to get even.

An allegory of our post-9/11 lives, but also a paean to the will that carries us through our darkest hours.

Five instantly recognizable multicultural characters play out their coincidental relationships in a contemporary paradisea park on the outskirts of a city. The pursuit of their personal goals, usually considered as good and worthwhile in our society, pits each of these characters irrevocably against each other, and good intentions are carried to their absurd extremes. Cast of 4 men, 2 women.

Contains "Gossip" (1977), "Filthy Rich" (1979) and "The Art of War" (1983), three plays that showcase Walker's film noir style.

Includes Governor General's Award-winning Criminals in Love (1984), Chalmers Award-winning Better Living (1986) and Escape from Happiness (1987).

Six plays, united only by the fact that they take place in one and the same suburban motel room: Problem Child, Criminal Genius, Risk Everything, Adult Entertainment, Featuring Loretta, and The End of Civilization. Transients, lovers, the haunted, the hunted, the desperate, the dumb, each strut and fret their hour upon the stage and then are heard of no more.

Includes "Beautiful City," "Love and Anger" and "Tough."

Contains Walker's own selection of his early plays: "Beyond Mozambique," "Zastrozzi," "Theatre of the Film Noir" and "Nothing Sacred."