Marion Bridge 2nd Edition. This item is unavailable.Marion Bridge 2nd Edition

This fascinating version of Daniel MacIvor’s most successful play to date lets the reader in on a secret: it was never primarily written as a work for live theatrical performance, but as a vehicle for his development of a screenplay, also included in this new edition. In his surprisingly revealing introduction, MacIvor talks about the genesis of both the play and the movie; the lessons he learned about the differences between the two media; and their radically different stylistic, technical and practical demands on both their authors and their audiences.

A well-known practitioner of Canada’s theatre of the avant-garde, MacIvor had for years wanted to write a brilliant screenplay, but there was a problem: he didn’t know how. Most of his stark improvisational work for the live stage, centreed around minimalist sets and props, dramatic effects of light and sound, and usually his own improvisational solo performances, did not translate well into the medium of film. So in order to realize his ambition he decided to create Marion Bridge, a piece of “conventional theatre,” as a vehicle or transitionary playscript he thought he could use as a stylistic “bridge” from the live stage to the cinema. In the fact that Marion Bridge has become his most successful play to date lies one of the most important lessons MacIvor learned about the vast differences between the two media―between live performance that always relies on the audience to participate with the actor(s) in the active and collective creation of landscape and time within the space they share, and the cinematic experience wherein the creators and actors are absent, and the audience is estranged from the action by its passive consumption of a narrative of space and time always understood to take place in someone else’s world outside of the theatre.

Cast of 4 women and 1 man

Born in Sydney, Cape Breton in 1962, Daniel MacIvor studied theatre at Dalhousie University in Halifax and George Brown College in Toronto. A prolific playwright, dynamic performer, producer, and artistic director, MacIvor has been creating original Canadian theatre since 1986 when he founded the highly acclaimed theatre company da da kamera, which has won a Chalmers Award for Innovation in Theatre (1998).

MacIvor is also a successful filmmaker. His projects include the award winning short film The Fairy Who Didn’t Want to Be a Fairy Anymore. His first feature film, Past Perfect (produced by Camelia Frieberg), premiered at the 2002 Toronto International Film Festival and was released in theatres across Canada in March and April of 2003. He also adapted his Governor General’s Award-nominated stage play, Marion Bridge, for the screen (directed by Wiebke von Carolsfeld), for which he won the Best Screenplay Award at the 2002 Atlantic Film Festival.

Talonbooks published his play Cul-de-sac in 2005.