Finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama
Monster, a one-man play, begins in the total darkness of a movie theatre. After a long silence, someone in the audience rudely shushes his neighbour, and the show begins. Daniel MacIvor transforms himself into a series of characters whose lives seem eerily related. There’s the young boy who tells the story of the neighbour lad who hacked up his father in the basement. There are alcoholic Al and whiny Janine, the lovers who quarrel, make up, and decide to marry after seeing a movie about a lad who… well, same thing. There’s the ex-drunk who dreamed up the movie, but got no credit because he was said to have stolen the idea from a famous unfinished film, a claim that so angered him that he went back on the sauce. And there’s the movie maker who made that incomplete epic.
News & Reviews
“… immensely clever.” —Irish Times
About the Authors
Daniel MacIvor was born in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He is the author and director of numerous award-winning theatre productions including See Bob Run, Wild Abandon, 2-2-Tango, This Is A Play, The Soldier Dreams, Are Here, How It Works, A Beautiful View, Communion, and Bingo! From 1987 to 2007 with Sherrie Johnson he ran da da kamera, a respected international touring company that brought his work to Australia, the UK and extensively throughout the US and Canada. With long time collaborator Daniel Brooks, he created the solo performances House, Here Lies Henry, Monster, Cul-de-sac, and This Is What Happens Next. Daniel won a GLAAD Award and a Village Voice Obie Award in 2002 for his play In On It, which was presented at PS 122 in New York. In 2006, Daniel received the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama for his collection of plays I Still Love You. In 2008, he was awarded the prestigious Siminovitch Prize in Theatre. His screenplays include Trigger and Weirdos.
Daniel Brooks is an accomplished director, writer, actor, and teacher, considered to be one of Canada’s foremost theatre artists. He has been co-director of the Augusta Company and da da camera, and Artistic Director of Toronto’s Necessary Angel Theatre Company. Daniel’s plays include The Return of Pokey Jones, The Noam Chomsky Lectures (with Guillermo Verdecchia, The Lorca Play (with Daniel MacIvor, Here Lies Henry (with MacIvor,) Insomnia (with Verdecchia,) This is What Happens Next (with MacIvor,) The Aleph (with Diego Matamoros,) 40 Days and Forty Nights (with Kim Collier,) and The Full Light of Day (with Collier). Brooks has won several awards, including the Chalmers Award, the Dora Mavor Moore Award, the Edinburgh Fringe First Award, and the Capital Critics Circle Award. In 2001, he received the first Siminovitch Prize in Theatre.