The finalists for the 2018 Governor General's Literary Award for drama
CBC Books | Posted: October 3, 2018 11:00 AM | Last Updated: October 3, 2018
Here are the finalists for the 2018 Governor General's Literary Award for drama.
The Governor General's Literary Awards are one of Canada's oldest and most prestigious prizes. The awards, administered by the Canada Council for the Arts, are given in seven English-language categories: fiction, nonfiction, poetry, young people's literature — text, young people's literature — illustration, drama and translation. Seven French-language awards are also given out in the same categories.
Each winner receives $25,000. The winners will be announced on Oct. 30, 2018.
This Is How We Got Here by Keith Barker
Playwright Keith Barker's This is How We Got Here looks at the ties that bind a family and the traumas that threaten to tear them apart. The sudden loss of a son affects a close-knit family in different ways and each family member — mother, father, aunt and uncle — must rally together to process the emotional fallout and persevere in the aftermath. Barker was a finalist for the 2018 Indigenous Voices Awards in the alterative format category.
Gertrude and Alice by Anna Chatterton and Evalyn Parry with Karin Randoja
Gertrude and Alice is a fictional look at the relationship of modernist literature icon Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas. The work sees the couple travel to the present day as they reflect on their lives and how history has treated them over the years.
The Men in White by Anosh Irani
Author and playwright Anosh Irani's latest work is based in Vancouver and Bombay. Eighteen-year-old Hasan Siddiqui is a boy in Bombay who dreams of becoming a star cricket player and winning the heart of Hassena. Meanwhile, over in Canada, older sibling Abdul toils as a worker in an Indian restaurant, hoping to earn enough money to reunite his family. The Men in White is a sobering look at racism and intolerance through the eyes of youth.
Paradise Lost by Erin Shields
Paradise Lost riffs off of the epic John Milton poem of the same name to create a contemporary treatise on the age-old dynamic of good versus evil. Erin Shields' dramatic work represents an adaptation that is equal parts mirthful, moving and passionate as it explores the nature of morality in a modern world.
Botticelli in the Fire & Sunday in Sodom by Jordan Tannahill
Playwright Jordan Tannahill revisits and reframes the historic and the mythic with Botticelli in the Fire & Sunday in Sodom. The work visits famed artist Sandro Botticelli as he paints the masterpiece that is The Birth of Venus to examine the sexual and political politics that were at play. In Sunday in Sodom, Tannahill places the Biblical destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the present day, looking at Lot's wife and what transpired during that fateful event.