Category: Books and Plays

According to Didier Eribon, melancholy is where it all starts and where it also ends: the lifelong process of mourning that each homosexual experiences, and through which they construct their own identity. In this beguiling book, an introverted, anxious, ambitious, artistically gifted queer Filipinx-Canadian boy finds solace, inspiration, and a “syllabus for living” in art — works of literature and music, from the children’s literary classic Anne of Green Gables to the music of Maria Callas. But their contribution to his intellectual, emotional, and spiritual edification belies the fact that they were largely heteronormative and white, which had the effect of invisibilizing him as a queer person of colour. Part memoir, part cultural commentary, and a hybrid of besotted aesthetic appreciation and unsparing critique, Double Melancholy is by turns a passionate love letter to art and an embattled examination of its oppressive complicity with the society that produces it, and the depths to which art both enriches and colonizes us.

One of the most controversial and uncompromising Canadian plays in recent memory, C. E. Gatchalian’s Falling In Time is an epic exploration of armed conflict, masculinity, sexuality, love, and forgiveness. Set in Vancouver in 1994, the year of the death of North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung, the play criss-crosses two hemispheres and spans more than forty years. Through all this, four distinctly different lives intertwine. Steve is an aging, outrageous, bisexual Korean War vet who embodies the sadistic tendencies of Western imperialism that polite society has too often tried to sweep from view. Jamie is an aloof, repressed ESL teacher haunted by a troubled childhood. Chang Hyun is a young Korean student brimming with anti-Western sentiment and still reeling from a traumatic experience in the military. In the middle of it all is Eun Ha, a woman who lives through the Korean War and, against all odds, finds the will to survive. A brutally honest depiction of war, rape, racism and animal sexuality, Falling In Time asks the question “How do we let go?”

Crossing & Other Plays showcases the work of Vancouver playwright and Lambda Literary Award finalist C. E. Gatchalian. CBC Radio stated: “Gatchalian is well on his way to making his mark in contemporary drama.” Gatchalian’s plays are reminders of the power of sexuality, trauma and the human condition.Crossing explores the tormented, sexually charged relationship between a mother and her teenage son, bound together by guilt and fear over a horrific incident that occurred ten years prior. Diamond is an elliptical, metatheatrical dissection of one woman’s intimate story. Ticks is the frantic, metronome-accompanied monologue of a self-appointed, disease-stricken messiah, eager to bring a plague upon the city.

Like a shard of glass to the spine, Gatchalian’s “Broken” is razor sharp, digging deep to scrape the nerve. Emotional dysfunction spreads like a plague through a namelessly familiar urban sprawl. In its wake, nothing survives unbroken: hearts, families, rhythms, dreams. At the epicentre of the maelstrom is a young man named Adrian, godlike and hurting, struggling to discern the sickness from the cure. New Bard Press is excited to publish this script as an artifact of Broken’s world premiere at Vancouver’s Firehall Arts Centre, March 2006.

Sound leads sense in this slim volume of poetry that combines raw, sensual energy with formal experimentation.

Note: No more copies available from the publisher. To order, please contact the author directly.

A finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, Motifs & Repetitions & Other Plays marks the publishing debut of one of North America’s most exciting new playwrights. The title play is a racy, comical, and ultimately shattering portrait of young love; Hands traces the disintegration of a bitter and divided family; Claire is a dark, Sartrean meditation on the brutal power structures in relationships; and Star is a brief but bracing monologue about the nature of obsession. With his minimalist settings and spare, rhythmical dialogue, C. E. Gatchalian creates a dark, claustrophobic world where sex, love and obsession mix to form terrifying realities. Although Gatchalian has been compared to British playwright Sarah Kane and his work bears the imprint of masters like Beckett, Albee and Mamet, the impression left by these plays is that of a writer whose voice is entirely his own.The book includes a foreword by renowned Canadian playwright Bryan Wade.

This collection seeks to understand why it is important not just to continue to tell queer stories on stage, but also to piece together the larger historical narrative of Canadian queer theatrical production and reception through academic research. Through these essays, artist reflections, and curatorial statements, the contributors generate theories and new ways of understanding how queer theatre and performance have contributed more broadly to the political and social development of LGBT2Q communities in Canada. Q2Q: Queer Canadian Theatre and Performance asks what a comparative analysis of contemporary queer performance practice in Canada can tell us about current appetites and potential future programming.

A companion anthology to Q2Q: Queer Canadian Theatre and Performance, the work contained in this volume provides a snapshot of Canadian contemporary queer performance practices—from solo performance to political allegory to family melodrama to intersectional narratives that combine text, movement, and music.