The Playwrights Database
DAVID FENNARIO
(1947 - )
Nationality:
Canadian
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Anglophone playwright born David Wiper in Montreal, Quebec, 1947. He was raised in the working class district of Pointe-St-Charles, an area he would make the centre of most of his plays. He was one of six children, his father was a housepainter. His pen name, given to him by a girlfriend, was part of a Bob Dylan song, Pretty Peggy-O. David Fennario has described his life as: Born on the Avenues in the Verdun-Pointe Saint Charles working-class district of Montreal; one of six kids growing up in Duplessis Quebec, repressed, depressed, oppressed and compressed. School was a drag. My working experience turned me into a raving Red calling for world revolution. the process of becoming a political activist gave me the confidence to be a writer. Up to then, I thought only middle-class people could become artists, because they were not stupid like working-class people, who were working-class because they were stupid. But reading Socialist literature convinced me that working-class people can change themselves and the world around them. We are not chained to fate, Freud, God, gender or a genetic code. We can make ourselves into what we want. Ive been trying my best to do that ever since, and have had some success as a playwright and a prose writer.
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Balconville
Three families and the neighbourhood drunk sit on their balconies in the Montreal summer. It is election time and Gaetan Bolduc drives around making promises that infuriate the families and their friends. as a result, we see the english and French Canadian working class take on the establishment. Winner, 1979 Chalmers Canadian Play award
Notes:
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1st Produced:
Centaur Theatre, Montreal 1979
Organisations:
Centaur Theatre Company
1st Published:
Talonbooks, Vancouver, 1980 978-0889221451
Music:
-
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Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 4 Female: 4 Other: -
Further Reference:
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Banana Boots
a one-man show/memoir in which Fennario recounts the phenomenon of taking his famous bilingual play Balconville, to Belfast on a British/Canadian cultural mission.
Notes:
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1st Produced:
annex Theatre, Toronto, Ontario. 1994
Organisations:
Mixed Company
1st Published:
Talon Books, Vancouver, BC, 1998 978-0889223967
Music:
-
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Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: - Other: -
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Blue Mondays
Synopsis:
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1st Produced:
- -
Organisations:
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1st Published:
Black Rock Creations (1984) 978-0920295007
Music:
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Bolsheviki
Set in a hotel bar in Montreal on Remembrance Day, Bolsheviki has World War I veteran Harry Rosie Rollins telling young reporter Jerry Nines about his experience in the trenches. Rollins recalls men pissing their pants, losing limbs and planning a revolt against their officers. the character of Rosie Rollins is based on World War I veteran Harry Rosie Rowbottom, who was wounded at Vimy Ridge. Fennario taped an interview with Rowbottom in 1979 in the old King eddy Hotel in Toronto over a bottle of Bushmills whiskey. Rosies meandering monologue delivers a blistering de-glorification of war as it shifts back and forth between his wartime recollections and the present. the veterans clattering, fast-paced description of lifeand deathon the Western Front reproduces the chaotic sounds and rhythm of battle. This cutting-edge drama, profoundly in opposition to conventional histories of Canadian troops in World War I, debunks every sentimental notion of duty, heroism and nationhood. Birth of Nation they called it on TV but I didnt see nobody getting born just a lot of people dying so we could sit there on top of another shit hole of mud with Captain Rutherford still pushing for that DSO or the MC or the MCB or the YMCA with Trianglesjust give him a medal will ya?
Notes:
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1st Produced:
InfiniTheatre, le Bain St-Michel, Montreal 09 Nov 2010
Organisations:
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1st Published:
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Genre:
dead serious comedy
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
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Changes
Synopsis:
author's personal story of becoming streetwise amongst the ethnic and language divides of Montreal.
Notes:
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1st Produced:
Ottawa 1980
Organisations:
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1st Published:
- -
Music:
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Genre:
One-man show
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
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Condoville
Synopsis:
the sequel to "Balconville" - twenty years on
Notes:
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1st Produced:
Centaur Theatre Company, Montreal 2005
Organisations:
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1st Published:
- -
Music:
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Death Of Rene Levesque, The
examination of the changes to the separatist movement in Quebec in an anniversary celebration of the death of its most charismatic leader.
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1st Produced:
Montreal 1991
Organisations:
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1st Published:
Talon Books, Vancouver, BC, 978-0889224803
Music:
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Doctor Thomas Neill Cream ( Mystery At Mcgill)
In 1876, Jack the Ripper, otherwise known as Canadian Doctor Thomas Neil Cream, graduated with merit from McGill's faculty of medicine. Cream was a backstreet abortionist and manages an exclusive brothel called the elite Club. His notorious reputation eventually forced him to flee Canada for London. He was hanged in 1892 for the murder of four prostitutes
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1st Produced:
Mixed Company, Toronto 1988
Organisations:
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1st Published:
Talon Books, Vancouver, BC, 978-0889223325
Music:
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Genre:
Drama One act
Parts:
Male: 6 Female: 4 Other: -
Further Reference:
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Gargoyles
Synopsis:
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Notes:
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1st Produced:
- -
Organisations:
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1st Published:
Talon Books 978-0889224469
Music:
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Genre:
-
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Joe Beef
a revisionist history of Montreal presented by the innkeeper who fed a thousand families during the strike in1887. a tough political satire that throws a mean left uppercut at the privileged classes.
Notes:
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1st Produced:
Blackrock Community Group, Montreal, Quebec. 1985
Organisations:
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1st Published:
Talonbooks, Vancouver, 1991 978-0889222915
Music:
-
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Genre:
Drama One act
Parts:
Male: 5 Female: 5 Other: -
Further Reference:
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Motherhouse
Women working in near slave conditions in a munitions factory during World War One
Notes:
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1st Produced:
- -
Organisations:
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1st Published:
Talonbooks 2014 978-0889228481
Music:
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Genre:
Drama
Parts:
Male: - Female: - Other: -
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Moving
Synopsis:
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Notes:
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1st Produced:
Montreal 1983
Organisations:
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1st Published:
- -
Music:
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Genre:
-
Parts:
Male: - Female: - Other: -
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Murder Of Susan Parr, The
Synopsis:
Depicts the break up and splintering of the local Pointe St. Charles Community in Montreal.
Notes:
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1st Produced:
Montreal 1989
Organisations:
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1st Published:
- -
Music:
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Nothing To Lose
In a tavern in the Point Saint Charles district of Montreal, three friends gather on their lunch hour to reminisce. an old friend turned radical playwright shows up at the bar. When one of the men challenges his abusive foreman, they take the advice of the playwright and launch a sit-down strike
Notes:
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1st Produced:
Centaur Theatre, Montreal 1976
Organisations:
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1st Published:
Talonbooks (February 15, 1977) 978-0889221215
Music:
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Genre:
Drama One act
Parts:
Male: 8 Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
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On the Job
Christmas eve 1970. the workers at a Montreal dress factory, frustrated by lack of job opportunities and emboldened by smuggled liquor, go on strike. the gesture proves futile and they wind up at home, jobless, with nothing to show but their Christmas bonuses.
Notes:
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1st Produced:
Centaur Theatre, Montreal 1975
Organisations:
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1st Published:
Talonbooks, Vancouver, 1976 978-0889221024
Music:
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Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: 8 Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Toronto
Synopsis:
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Notes:
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1st Produced:
Centaur Theatre, Montreal 1978
Organisations:
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1st Published:
- -
Music:
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To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
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Genre:
Play/Drama
Parts:
Male: - Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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Without A Parachute
Synopsis:
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Notes:
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1st Produced:
Toronto 1978
Organisations:
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1st Published:
McClelland and Stewart 1974 978-0771031205
Music:
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Genre:
-
Parts:
Male: - Female: - Other: -
Further Reference:
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