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Dear Tanja Jacobs and Philip McKee (Or, Greek Tragedy Is Dead; Long Live...
Dear Tanja and Phil, I really liked Bloody Family, your re-imagining of Aeschylus’ Oresteia that’s now playing at Toronto’s Theatre Centre. I hope a lot of people attend your final four performances....
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Dear Richard Rose (Or, A New Moment For Theatre in Toronto?)
Dear Richard, Did you ever read or hear Obama’s January 2009 inauguration speech? I remember my delight as I read the transcript that the New York Times posted online, how moved I was by its complexity...
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Dear Daniel Karasik (Or, Self-Exam #1)
Dear Daniel, How’s it going? I know you hear enough from me already, but I’d like to lob a few public thoughts in your direction. Hope you’ll forgive the indulgence. I think this open-letter project of...
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Dear Joel Greenberg (Or, What Makes “Political Theatre” Political?)
Dear Joel, It’s tempting to grant you amazing gifts of foresight: your production of young British author Lucy Kirkwood’s play NSFW (Not Safe For Work), a satire about the media and cultural attitudes...
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Dear Jordan Tannahill (Or, Wisdom, Love, and a Reply to Hitler)
Dear Jordan, I write to you not in a spirit of critique or challenge, not specifically about your most recent play (Concord Floral, which was terrific), but because I have thoughts I feel the need to...
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Dear Morris Panych (Or, The Artist and the Political Right)
Dear Morris, Do you know that tired old saw about socialism and capitalism, innocence and experience, that’s attributed variously to Winston Churchill, Georges Clemenceau, François Guizot? I’ll...
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Dear Matthew Jocelyn (Or, The Soulful Text and The De-Souled Actor)
Dear Matthew, I like your taste in plays. I was thrilled to hear that you’d programmed Simon Stephens’s 2008 play Harper Regan, a longtime favourite of mine, at Canadian Stage, the large Toronto...
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Dear Hannah Moscovitch (Or, Is Love The Limit?)
Dear Hannah, What’s the “common sense” definition of gifted playwright, a definition that would be accepted by those without highly specialized (“scientific”) knowledge of theatre? I’d say it might go...
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Dear Erin Brubacher (Or, Misogyny and Representation)
Dear Erin, Thanks so much for your open letter to me about my play Little Death, the premiere production of which just closed at Toronto’s Theatre Centre. Your letter is one of the most thoughtful...
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Dear Erin Shields (Or, In Praise of the Female Gaze)
Dear Erin, A friend of mine, a Canadian teaching in Sweden, once gave me an interesting primer on the Swedish dating scene. According to her, bars in Sweden are populated by young men ranged coyly...
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Dear Leora Morris (Or, The Politics of Making Theatre About Terrible Things)
Dear Leora, “Audience participation” is rare these days in theatre for adults, but there’s a striking instance of it in your staging of Yael Farber’s play He Left Quietly, which won the Outstanding...
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Dear George F. Walker (Or, Fuck Oedipus)
Dear George, One of the nice things about my high school in sleepy Thornhill is that its library stocked lots of your plays. An anthology of your East End plays, a volume of your Suburban Motel series....
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