This Season: A New Play Commission by John Murrell

Last November, DVxT Theatre Company commissioned John Murrell to write a new play for actors Brian Dennehy, Daniela Vlaskalic and Bruce Godfree.

Envisioning the project, Brian took the lead by talking about how he was always trying to talk to his Canadian colleagues and friends about the Canadian-American question and could never seem to get into the heart of it. We mused that possibly Canadians were too self-effacing and polite to actually get to the truth of it with our American friends, but that indeed, it was a discussion worth having; and worth having onstage.

Brian and Daniela talked about two characters - an older, cynical, fading writer and a younger, shrewd, hungry professor - and the kind of circumstances that would bring them together theatrically. John percolated, filling out narrative, structure and character development and Dennehy's "Niall" and Vlaskalic's "Giovanna" were born: two characters who stand on either sides of national, political, professional and generational borders.

Early in our discussions, John added a third character, a professional and personal companion to "Giovanna", and a foil to "Niall", who would bring the British perspective into play. Bruce Godfree has joined our team to complete the cast.

We are very excited about the future of Under the Influence (working title). For now, our focus is on giving John the time and support he needs to bring the script to first draft. At which point we will move as quickly to secure production dates for late fall 2012. We are all completely thrilled with John's vision for the piece and can't wait to get into a rehearsal hall with the new material.

We will be workshopping the first draft later this summer in Stratford, Ontario.

From John Murrell:

Under the Influence (working title), my new play commissioned by DVxT Theatre, was inspired by the following plot idea:

Niall O'Dowd, an enormously gifted but notoriously obstreperous Irish-American novelist in his seventies, is invited by Giovanna Savona, a Contemporary Literature professor at McMaster University, to do a number of high-profile public appearances and a modest amount of teaching over a period of several weeks during the current year. No longer the "seminal influence" he once was, and needing the money because of personal financial disasters, and also because of the negative reception of his most recent book (a sometimes incoherent neo-ultra-conservative non-fiction rant about the decline of "America's guts"), O'Dowd accepts the invitation.

From his first night in Hamilton, the night which is the focus of my play, O'Dowd disrupts Giovanna's equilibrium and threatens her academic reputation, through his aggressively negative attitudes and comments about her life, her work, her country, about the teaching profession, about the writing profession as conducted by everybody except himself, about Canadian, American, and global politics - about everything, in fact.

O'Dowd is an alcoholic genius at crisis stage, both as an author and as a human being. Although Giovanna is a longtime admirer of and commentator on O'Dowd's work, she finds it increasingly impossible to cope with him, as they wait in a lecture theatre anteroom, before his first speech to an invited audience of critics, academics, students, and the general public. Giovanna is assisted in her efforts to wrangle O'Dowd by Geoff King, her young teaching assistant, who is devoted to her, and who becomes, from the first, a target for O'Dowd's savage wit. Geoff is British, for one thing, and, besides, he is young, highly intelligent in an excessively organized way, and of uncertain sexuality - all things which quickly ignite O'Dowd's belligerence, and his fierce competition for Giovanna's attention and admiration.

In the course of two acts, O'Dowd, Giovanna and Geoff will fight about literature, about nationality, about sex, about the future of the world, about youth versus age, about life and death. They will also, all three of them, unwillingly and sometimes agonizingly reveal long-kept secrets about their own feelings, their own histories, their own contradictions. I think the play will be and must be a comedy.

As a 65-year-old Canadian playwright who spent most of his early years in the United States, I feel passionately compelled by this story of border-crossing - of border crossings of every kind: generational, emotional, political, aesthetic.

DVxT looks forward to bringing you more information about Under the Influence as we workshop the script and prepare for full production in the coming seasons.

Next Season The Provok’d Wife:

Last season, we commissioned playwright and actor Rick Roberts to adapt The Provok'd Wife (1697) by English dramatist and architect Sir John Vanbrugh. We chose this rarely performed classic for the intelligence of Vanbrugh's writing, his contemporary ideas about marriage and his wonderful parts for women.

The premise-that a wife trapped in an abusive marriage might consider either leaving it or taking a lover-outraged many in the late 17th century. Vanbrugh chose to bring attention to the subordinate legal position of married women and the complexities of separation, using sophisticated language and bawdy humour.

Rick has streamlined the text, brought minor characters to the fore and invigorated the text with a brilliant design concept.

In November, 2011, The Provok'd Wife will première as part of the Theatre @ York season. Theatre @ York productions feature the work of renowned directors, and showcase the performance and production talents of undergraduate and graduate students in York's Theatre Department, some of Canada's most promising young stage talent.