With a Foreword by the Author
"Before becoming a playwright I was a novelist, and one who was often
impatient with the requisite description of weather or scenery or even
with the business of moving people from room to room. I was more
interested in the sound of people talking to each other, reacting to
each other, or leaving silences for others to fall into." -- Carol
Shields
From one of Canada's most beloved authors comes a collection of four
works written for the stage, including her most popular and highly
acclaimed play Thirteen Hands.
The theatrical form allows Carol Shields' strength as a master of
dialogue to shine at its brightest, as she returns to themes she
explores in her prose: love, family, friendship, and the hidden meanings
and larger truths found beneath the surface of the minutiae of daily
life. Thirteen Hands and Other Plays is an exhilarating introduction
to Shields' considerable achievements as a playwright.
Departures and Arrivals (1990) dramatizes how lives are heightened and
enlarged when taken within the frame of public spaces -- airports, train
stations, public streets -- so that we all become, in a sense, actors.
Thirteen Hands (1993), a musical, valorizes a consistently overlooked
group in our society, "the blue-rinse set" -- also known as "the white
glove brigade" or "the bridge club biddies" -- and has had the strongest
professional run of all Shields' plays. Fashion, Power, Guilt and the
Charity of Families (1995), written with her daughter, Catherine
Shields, interrogates the ambivalence felt towards families, the drive
we all share to find or create some kind of family, and the equally
strong desire to escape the family's fury. Anniversary (1998), written
with Dave Williamson, is a domestic drama of discontented, middle class
suburbanites. One couple in the play are married and pretending to be
close to separation. Another couple, who are separated, are pretending
to be married. The additional irony is that the separated couple are
still emotionally together, while the married couple have already
emotionally separated.
