About the Play:

Winner of the 1991 Governor General's Drama Award (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize)

Amigo's Blue Guitar is a full-length drama by Joan MacLeod. Presents a nuanced and challenging evocation of refugees' spirits. As one character flees a history of torture in Central America, another's history as a draft dodger uncovers itself to sit uneasily with the present, provoking a reexamination of what it means to escape our demons. Passionate, humane and often amusing, Amigo's Blue Guitar treats its characters with gentleness and respect.

Amigo's Blue Guitar tells the story of an El Salvadoran refugee and the family of an American draft dodger who pulls together to welcome him to Canada. A college student's life is given meaning when he chooses to sponsor Elias, a Salvadoran refugee, as a class project. When Elias arrives, his hosts Sander and his family, learn what it means and feels like to be a refugee and how to relate to someone who has endured such intense personal grief. It explores what it means and feels to be a refugee and how to relate to someone who has endured such intense personal grief. The warmth and humour of the characters invite us to embrace the situation – be at once moved and threatened by it – and to consider how we ourselves would react.

Amigo's Blue Guitar premiered in 1990 in the Mainspace at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto and has had worldwide success.

Cast: 2 female, 3 male

What people say:

"Joan MacLeod's writing is strong and travels single-mindedly in its chosen direction, like an eccentric in the park who grabs you by the arm and takes you on a journey you hadn’t planned." — The Globe and Mail

About the Playwright:

Joan MacLeod is an internationally celebrated Canadian playwright. She grew up in North Vancouver, lived for eight years in Toronto as playwright-in-residence at Tarragon Theatre, before settling on Bowen Island just outside Vancouver. Since 2004, she has taught at the department of writing at University of Victoria. Her plays have been extensively produced around the world, and she has won multiple theatre awards, including the recipient the Governor General's Award, two Chalmers Canadian Play Awards and the 2011 Siminovitch Prize in Theatre, Canada's largest theatre award.