About the Play:

HARD TO FIND BOOK, only a very limited number of copies are still available.

An Anglophone is Coming to Dinner is a full-length comedy by George Rideout. When Henri Gosselin invites an anglophone home to dinner, his wife Denyse dreams of the perfect soiree that boldly announces the new vision of Québec society. In this high stakes tennis match of language and culture, Madame Gosselin discovers that life is anything but simple when an anglophone is coming to dinner.

An Anglophone is Coming to Dinner is a Texas-flavoured satire on Québéc politics. "I love Shakespeare, I love Chekhov, I love Michel Tremblay…" With a backdrop of the Lone Star and the Fleur-de-Lys flags, Jim Bob Baker introduces himself and his troupe, the Lubbock Community Theatre, who have come all the way from Texas to perform for a Montréal audience. The play, Un Anglophone Vient Souper, written by a little-known Québéc playwright, has been translated into English by the director Jim Bob himself, except for "the swearin" which he decided sounded better in the original French. Colliding worlds of culture and language are served up in a Texas-sized way in this social satire of a Québécois family playing host to a bewildered, Ontario-born English professor.

An Anglophone is Coming to Dinner premiered in 2001 at Théâtre Lac-Brome, located in the picturesque village of Knowlton, Québéc.

Cast: 3 female, 3 male, plus 1 any gender

What people say:

"Only an expatriate Texan like Rideout can walk in where angels fear to tread ... everything moves like clockwork in this hilarious satire on post-referendum entente." — The Montreal Gazette

"Funny, though provoking, and multi-layered...." — The Sherbrooke Record

"...full of clever mispronunciations, word play, and digs at Quebec society... [Anglophone] grabbed the audience and kept them laughing all the way through." — The Stanstead Journal

About the Playwright:

George Rideout was raised in Texas and moved to Thunder Bay, Ontario at the age of sixteen. He lived in several different provinces before settling for good in Québec. He now teaches theatre at Bishop's University, where the annual New Plays Festival presents one-act plays written in his playwriting class. His own work as a playwright is more widely celebrated, winning numerous regional and national playwriting awards.