ArticlesLuis Reis
Luis Reis is a long-serving member of Winnipeg Mennonite Theatre, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary. He has worked as a producer, director, and stage manager.
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DramaNon-linear play about bipolar disorder casts audience in role of silent therapist
Edmonton-based playwright Beth Graham says it wasn’t her idea to tackle the stigma and challenges of mental illness and the impact it has on a family. -
DramaPlaywright examines polarizing topic of MAID and Jewish faith with flashes of humour
In Seven Days, a play by Toronto-based Jordi Mand, deals with a family’s response to MAID – the process of allowing a terminally ill person to receive medical assistance in dying. The idea for the play arose when a friend of Mand’s father announced that he had qualified for MAID and planned to proceed. His decision sparked intense debate within the Jewish community and within Mand’s own family. -
DramaPlaywrights float through time, illuminate Métis story from Laurence’s work
In The Diviners, adapted from Margaret Laurence’s classic Canadian novel, playwrights Vern Thiessen and Yvette Nolan focus on the adult Morag Gunn – a novelist with writer’s block who is estranged from her daughter, Pique, and who struggles with alcoholism. -
Non-FictionLetters to young son connect to the past, show new visions for masculinity
In his memoir Trust the Bluer Skies: Meditations on Fatherhood, Alberta-based author paulo da costa writes to his four-year-old son, Koah, recording the details of their five-month stay with family in Portugal. In a series of letters, he shows his strong ties to his family, heritage, and culture – to the landscape of his youth. -
FeaturesCanada’s first open access publishing house wants books to reach the broader public
The Athabasca University Press was founded in 2007 as the first open access publishing house in Canada. Its mandate, like the mandate of its parent institution, is to reduce barriers to knowledge. -
DramaReal-life pilgrimage to Burning Man amid grief, transformation comes to life in one-woman play
Mieko Ouchi’s one-woman play Burning Mom follows Dorothy, a character based on the playwright’s mother, as she uncovers the pain and grief of the past so that she can fully embrace the future. The title is a reference to Burning Man, the Nevada art festival to which Ouchi’s mother made a pilgrimage a year after her husband’s passing. -
DramaPlay moves from traditional to surreal settings, drawing audience in to consider mortality
Winnipeg-based actor, director, and playwright Debbie Patterson’s play How It Ends explores end-of-life choices and the legalization of medical assistance in dying. “It’s the thing we all want to know but don’t want to know: the circumstances under which we will die,” she says. -
DramaIntimacy, ‘rural, down-home feel’ incorporated into play about dementia on a family farm
“The wind takes. It breaks. It bends. It harms and steals. But it brings too.” So says the character Sarah near the end of Daniel Macdonald’s play Blow Wind. -
FeaturesPublisher preserves oral culture, safeguards accomplishments of Indigenous people
“Oh, wow!” “Oh, my gosh!” This is what the Dëne Sųłiné or Chipewyan word eschia means in English. Eschia Books, based in Stony Plain, Alberta, on Treaty 6 territory, is an Indigenous-owned publishing house. -
FictionMennonites do have a sense of humour, and Andrew Unger’s collection proves it
In the follow-up to his award-winning debut novel, Once Removed, Steinbach-based author Andrew Unger returns to familiar territory with The Best of the Bonnet, a selection of articles from The Daily Bonnet, the website where he has posted approximately 2,300 satirical news articles over the last five years.
