About the Play:

Finalist for the 2009 Governor General's Award for Drama (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize)

Another Home Invasion is a full-length drama by Joan MacLeod. Elderly Jean is on a waiting list to get her and her husband into the retirement home of their choice. When a troubled stranger lands on her doorstep, she must look at how invasions of our privacy, independence and home life transform us, especially as we get older. This tour de force one-woman play gives voice to a funny, angry and determined heroine who refuses to allow age, dire circumstances or the system to crush her dignity or the love for her husband.

Another Home Invasion is a perceptively poignant play where "another" carries both its meanings: something commonplace; and something of an entirely different kind and nature. Eighty-year old Jean is living in the same house she and her husband Alec bought more than fifty years ago. Now, he is ailing and the couple is waiting to get into a retirement residence. She has her heart set on a facility where the two can live together with a measure of independence, but Alec's declining health is putting that prospect in jeopardy. As Jean struggles bravely with health-care red tape and her husband's dementia, her vulnerability is underscored by a meth addict who lurks mysteriously on her doorstep. But is he the real threat to the home's occupants? He even shows up for a return visit. Who, then, are the real perpetrators of the heartless betrayal of the elderly couple who lives here: who is it that's robbing them of their possessions, their security, their relationship, their family – their home? The answers to these questions are as surprising as they are unsettling.

Another Home Invasion premiered in 2009 at the Alberta Theatre Projects in Calgary and was a finalist for the 2009 Governor General's Award for Drama. Since then the play had regional premieres at professional theatres across Canada and has been mounted in the US.

Cast: 1 female

What people say:

"The playwright shares with novelist Ian McEwan the ability to stretch tension out over everyday domestic scenes … Another Home Invasion is piercingly accurate writing that interrogates how our society is really serving our seniors at a time when they most need our help." — Globe & Mail

"A perfect evening of theatre … there isn't a false word in MacLeod's script." — Calgary Herald

"A finely honed work of art." — Toronto Star

"…even better than Shape of a Girl." — National Post

"A startling commentary on aging and elder care." — CBC

"Another Home Invasion is a deliciously readable monologue." — BC Bookworld

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.