About this item
Highlights
- Everything changes on what begins as a typical day in the life of the aptly named Mr. Mann, a forty-eight-year-old, buttoned-down, middle-management type in a pinstriped grey suit, who feels himself losing touch with his job, his wife, his children, and the rest of his urban life.
- Governor General's Literary Awards (Translation) 2014 3rd Winner
- About the Author: Michel Nadeau is an actor, director, and playwright who has long been active in Quebec arts and culture.
- 144 Pages
- Philosophy, Aesthetics
Description
About the Book
A complex and captivating dramatization of the powerful way art can transform our lives.Book Synopsis
Everything changes on what begins as a typical day in the life of the aptly named Mr. Mann, a forty-eight-year-old, buttoned-down, middle-management type in a pinstriped grey suit, who feels himself losing touch with his job, his wife, his children, and the rest of his urban life. He wins tickets to a production of Chekhov's Three Sisters and realizes that the mid-life cocoon he has spun around himself is beginning to unwind.
And Slowly Beauty, first performed in French in 2003, was created -collaboratively by Michel Nadeau and colleagues from his Quebec troupe, Théâtre Niveau Parking. With the intensity of an electric current striking a reflecting pool, Nadeau shows us how Chekhov's century-old drama about the yearning of three sisters in a dreary provincial town directly addresses Mann's own stifled existence and liberates him from his self-imposed "gulag."
Review Quotes
"And Slowly Beauty is a complex, infinitely rich play ... The script's virtuoso ability to balance humour and drama is particularly fine."
- Victoria Times Colonist
"And Slowly Beauty is no simple kitchen-sink drama. There is much laughter in unexpected places and some deftly directed movements that quicken the interplay of action and ideas. Like Mr. Mann at the theatre, 'we were transported'."
- Globe and Mail
Finalist for the 2014 Governor General's Literary Award for Translation
About the Author
Michel Nadeau is an actor, director, and playwright who has long been active in Quebec arts and culture. Since 1987, he has served as artistic director at Quebec City's Théâtre Niveau Parking, and has been writer-in-residence at Théâtre du Trident, where he directed, among others, Rossini's The Barber of Seville and Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba. Nadeau has been a professor at Quebec's national theatre and music school since 1986, where he teaches improvisation, dramatic movement, mask work, and commedia dell'arte.
Maureen Labonté is a dramaturge, translator, and teacher. She has also coordinated a number of play development programs in theatres across Canada, including Quebec's Centre des auteurs dramatiques (CEAD) and Playwrights Workshop Montreal. From 2009 to 2012, she served as jury chair for the prestigious Siminovitch Prize in Theatre. Labonté has been the co-director of the Banff Playwrights' Colony since 2008, and has been on faculty since 2003, when she began as resident dramaturge. In 2005, she was named program head.