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Wendy Lill

WENDY LILL

  (1950 - )
Nationality:    Canadian
email:    n/a     Website:    Click here

Literary Agent:    Catalyst TCM Inc  

Born in Vancouver in 1950, Wendy Lill has not only written extensively for radio, magazines, film, television and the stage, but has also been active in national politics. Lill received a B.A. in political science from York University in 1970. She remained in Toronto after graduation, continuing to pursue her interest in writing before moving to Winnipeg in 1979 to work as a journalist for the CBC. Lill has been the president of Integration Action Groupa provincial advocacy group for children with special needs; vice president (eastern) of the Playwrights Union of Canada; a co-founder of the eastern Front Theatre Company; a member of the Nova Scotia Writers' Federation; and a past member of the Board of the Dartmouth Day Care Centre. Between June 1997 and June 2004, Lill was an MP from the Dartmouth Riding in Nova Scotia for the New Democratic Party, serving as the party's spokesperson for media and communications, human rights, persons with disabilities and Canadian heritage. She did not stand for re-election in the 2004 election. In 1979, while with CBC Radio in Winnipeg, Lill wrote her first play, On the Line, to dramatize the plight of striking Winnipeg garment industry workers. Since then, her plays have gone on to examine the Canadian women's suffrage movement (the Fighting Days); aboriginal-white relations (the Occupation of Heather Rose, Sisters); pedophilia and mass hysteria (All Fall Down); the slashing of social programs (Corker); and the dangerous lives of coal miners in her adopted province of Nova Scotia (the Glace Bay Miners' Museum). Her skill at turning the potentially deadly issue play into compelling, emotionally charged Theatre has resulted in four nominations for the Governor General's Drama Award.

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below is a list of Wendy Lill's plays - click on a Play Title for more information

         All Fall Down         Chimera         Corker         Fighting Days, The         Genie         Glace Bay Miners' Museum         Memories Of You         Occupation Of Heather Rose, The         Sisters

All Fall Down

All Fall Down
about modern day witch-hunting. Set in the midst of an alleged sexual abuse case at a daycare centre, the play examines the roots of intolerance and hysteria, and their effects on love

Notes:
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1st Produced:

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Talon Books, Vancouver, BC, 1994   

Music:
-

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

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  2            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Chimera

Chimera
the efforts to regulate stem cell research

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
-    

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Talonbooks,    

Music:
-

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

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Corker

Corker
Corker uses the familiar but difficult and treacherous nineteenth century device of representing the family as a microcosm of the nation state. Opening with the extended family's awkward attendance at "Serena," aging flower child of the sixties' funeral, the symbolic conflicts build quickly. Serena's sister "Merit," the hard driving, social program budget slashing female political aparatchik and her husband "Leonard," a lion of free enterprise, are hell bent on dismantling their government's social services by replacing them with a privatized human warehousing system whose track record to date has been the streamlining of the American prison system. But there's a problem: Serena's developmentally challenged friend "Corker," the family's faded and failed country gentleman brother "Galahad," and their octogenarian mother "Florence," all become victims of Merit and Leonard's "success." It is Wendy Lill's great skill as a playwright that actually makes this symbolism work by unravelling it into a devastating con

Notes:
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1st Produced:
Neptune Theatre, Halifax, Ns     1998

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Talon Books, Vancouver, BC, 1998   

Music:
-

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

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  4            Female:  2            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Fighting Days, The

Fighting Days, The
Set in the 1910's, the play follows Frances Beynon's journey into the Winnipeg feminist movement, where she eventually clashes with Nellie McClung over pacifism and universal suffrage

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Prairie Theatre Exchange, Winnipeg.     1983

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Talon Books, Vancouver, BC, 1985   

Music:
-

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

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  1            Female:  3            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Genie

Genie
-

Notes:
This is a remarkable volume of plays written by many of Canada's favorite and familiar playwrights, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Tarragon theatre's annual Spring Arts Fair. This is a stimulating and diverse collection of 45 plays that premiered in the first 20 years of the fair. the book is a testament to Tarragon's commitment to the development of outstanding Canadian plays and playwrights.

1st Produced:
-    

Organisations:
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1st Published:
Contained in: "Snappy Shorts at the Tarragon" published by Playwrights Canada Press 2005   

Music:
-

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

Booksellers:

Genre:
Short play

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  -            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Glace Bay Miners' Museum

Glace Bay Miners' Museum
a story of the ill-fated love between a wandering musician-social idealist and a Cape Breton coal miner's daughter whose dreams are reawakened by their passion, this is a play of the all consuming brightness of dreams and memory, overshadowed by absantee greed, callousness, and exploitation. a tragedy that is hard as nails, totally unsentimental, yet full of love and humour.

Notes:
Based on the novel by Sheldon Currie

1st Produced:
Eastern Front Theatre And Ship's Company Theatre.     1996

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Talon Books, Vancouver, BC, 1996   

Music:
-

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

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  3            Female:  2            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Memories Of You

Memories Of You
the life of Elizabeth Smart pivoted on a turbulent affair that produced four children and her one book By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept. When her resentful and drug-ridden daughter Rose comes to visit, mother and daughter confront each other with their own distinct visions of the past. Rose remembers that her Father used her mother, Elizabeth remembers that she chose the Father of her children, and that she did not regret that choice.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Prairie Theatre Exchange, Winnipeg.     1988

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Talon Books, Vancouver, BC, 1989   

Music:
-

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

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  1            Female:  4            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Occupation Of Heather Rose, The

Occupation Of Heather Rose, The
Two epigraphs that frame the Occupation of Heather Rose, one from Alice in Wonderland and the other from Heart of Darkness, prepare the audience for the nightmare of dislocation and alienation this one-woman show evokes. Young, naive, and inadequately trained, urban health care/social worker Heather Rose flirts with the pilot as she wings her way north in a bush plane, to land in an isolated and remote northern/Native community, carrying her Canada Food Guides, plans for fitness classes and community social activities with her. She is met, when she lands, with what she initially perceives as a careless disrespect for anything she has understood to date of culture and civilization. the destitute, wretched and alienated Native population she has been sent to move forward meet her bright imperial gaze with the blank stares that arise from relentless years of exploitation and broken promises. Nine months later Heather Rose is bushedutterly disillusioned by the growing horror of her new-found realization that what her culture has to offer this community: the alcohol bootlegged in by the charming bush pilot; the unsuitable clothing sold by the thoughtless proprietor of the general store; the gasoline used as much by the youth of the community to get high as to afford them access to what has become the tractless wilderness they inhabit; she finally understands is less than nothingtotal dependency. She returns, compelled, like Marlowe in Heart of Darkness to tell her story to otherslike her missing supervisor, whose empty office she occupies on her return, illustrating her monologue of despair on a blackboard to an absent colonial authority for which the audience stands in as its silent and complicit witness.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Prairie Theatre Exchange, Winnipeg.     27 Feb 1986

Organisations:
-

1st Published:

Music:
-

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

Booksellers:

Genre:
Drama One act

Parts:
Male:  -            Female:  1            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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Sisters

Sisters
a tough uncompromising look at a convent-run Native residential school. the soul destroying devastation caused by these institutions from the point of view of the nuns running the school.

Notes:
-

1st Produced:
Ship's Company, Parrsboro     1989

Organisations:
-

1st Published:
Talon Books, Vancouver, BC, 1991   

Music:
-

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

Booksellers:

Genre:
Play/Drama

Parts:
Male:  2            Female:  4            Other:  -

Further Reference:
-

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