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Dead Metaphor

Dead Metaphor

Three Plays

by George F. Walker

Published by: Talonbooks

Imprint: Talonbooks

208 Pages, 6.00 x 22.90 x 0.50 cm

Paperback
9780889229280
Published: July 2015

$19.95

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Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

Canada’s top playwright sears the page with three new darkly comic plays that denounce political culture, individualism, and the accompanying moral depravity. The title play, Dead Metaphor, examines the collision of a politician’s personal and professional lives, complicated by a son’s return from Afghanistan. In The Ravine, a mayoral candidate learns that his ex-wife is living in a gully nearby and wants to put a hit on him. The Burden of Self-Awareness has money at the centre of a dramatic conflict of values. Each of the three plays is populated by characters trying to navigate the increasingly blurred lines of what’s right and wrong – trying to always stay informed, alert, and ready to act for the common good. Or just to get even.

Contents

Dead Metaphor
The Ravine
The Burden of Self-Awareness

George F. Walker is one of Canada’s most prolific and popular playwrights. He has written more than twenty plays and has created screenplays for several award-winning Canadian TV series.

During a ten-year absence, he mainly wrote for television, including the television series Due South, The Newsroom, This Is Wonderland, and The Line, as well as for the film Niagara Motel (based on three plays from his Suburban Motel series). Walker returned to the theater with And So It Goes (2010). Since that time he has published King of Thieves (2013); Dead Metaphor (2015, a series of three plays that include Dead Metaphor, The Ravine, and The Burden of Self Awareness); and Moss Park and Tough! The Bobby and Tina Plays (2015). After Class, a series of plays that address education and parenting, will be published in 2017.

Awards and honours include investiture as a Member of the Order of Canada (2005); National Theatre School Gascon-Thomas Award (2002); two Governor General’s Literary Awards for Drama (for Criminals in Love and Nothing Sacred); five Dora Mavor Moore Awards; and eight Chalmers Canadian Play Awards.

PRAISE FOR DEAD METAPHOR

“gritty, grungy and in your face. Its humour drips like drops of liquid tranquillizer designed to soothe undercurrents of lethal pain. While the play’s mind-numbing rage fuels anger, its excoriating comedy leaves you breathless. … Did I say Walker’s work is threatening and provocative, theatre that ought to be seen? Well, it is. The language is unremittingly rough, but true. These people talk like they think.”
– Hamilton Spectator

PRAISE FOR DEAD METAPHOR

“an important play … there is plenty of raunchy humor (with the emphasis on raunchy, so be prepared), and even a kernel or two of truth, which are more than enough to make your experience worthwhile … while you’ll laugh all night, you might also squirm a little from time to time. I highly recommend the experience.”
– Finger Lakes Times

PRAISE FOR DEAD METAPHOR“funny, disturbing and highly reflective of our drastically divided post-Sept. 11 political climate. The playwright, a master of the theatrical twist, turns conventional wisdom on its head”
– Finger Lakes Times

PRAISE FOR THE RAVINE:

“a gritty, dark comedy … Brimming with timely political commentary”
– Today Magazine

PRAISE FOR THE RAVINE:

“a dark, dirty good time … gloriously unhinged”
– Niagara Falls Review

PRAISE FOR THE RAVINE:

“filled with clever lines and moments as well as death, desperation, love, treachery and opportunity.”
– Descant blog

Dead Metaphor

Three Plays

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