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Tremblay's four memorable solo performances for the stage: "A Trick of Fate," "Anatomy Lesson," "The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi" and "Ogre."
About the author
Larry TremblayLarry Tremblay is a writer, director, actor and specialist in Kathakali, an elaborate dance theatre form which he has studied on numerous trips to India. He has published 20 books as a playwright, poet, novelist and essayist. The recent publication of
Talking Bodies (Talonbooks, 2001) brought together four of his plays in English translation.
Sheila FischmanBorn in Saskatchewan, Sheila Fischman is a member of the Order of Canada and has a doctorate from the University of Waterloo.
A two-time Governor General's Award winner, Fischman has translated from French to English more than a hundred novels by such prominent Quebec writers as Michel Tremblay, Jacques Poulin, Anne Hébert, François Gravel, Marie-Claire Blais and Roch Carrier.
In 2008, Fischman was awarded the prestigious Molson Prize for her outstanding contributions to Canadian literature.
Summary
Talking Bodies collects Larry Tremblay’s four stunning and memorable solo performances for the stage. Thematically related, each deals with the reconstruction of an identity which, through trauma, illusion, accident or destiny, has been threatened, destabilized, broken or dispersed.
It is the body in which any identity finds its origin, but it is only in that body’s gestures, the most complex of which is language, that this construct of identity can be elaborated. Each of these characters is a body placed on a stage where it enacts both its limitations and its possibilities with its words.
With an introduction by Jane M. Moss.
Talking Bodies includes:
A Trick of Fate
A man loses a tooth eating a chocolate éclair, then all his teeth, his tongue, a finger, and finally his head, as his body increasingly abandons its “ordinary” place in the world.
Anatomy Lesson
A professor re-examines and dissects her long relationship with her abusive, slick, lawyer-politician husband.
The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi
Forty years after a trauma-induced aphasia, a man loses his maternal French and awakes from a dream reinventing his life in English words using French syntax.
Ogre
In this biting media satire, a thoroughly odious character’s actions become ever more disgusting as he increasingly believes a hidden camera is recording his every move.
