About the Play:

The collection Dead Metaphor contains three full-length comedic dramas by George F. Walker. One of Canada's top playwrights sears the page with three darkly comic plays that denounce political culture, individualism, and the accompanying moral depravity. Each of the three plays is populated by characters trying to navigate the increasingly blurred lines of what's right and wrong – trying to always stay informed, alert, and ready to act for the common good. Or just to get even.

The title play, Dead Metaphor, examines the collision of a politician's personal and professional lives, complicated by a son's return from Afghanistan. When Dean returns home from the war in the Middle East and hits the job market, he discovers that his superior military skills don't get him very far in the business world. His readjustment to non-bunker life begins by moving in with his aging parents and pregnant ex-(and soon-to-be current) wife. When he is offered a job as poster boy for a crusading politician on her own mission for 'truth and justice,' his military ethics collide with the unscrupulous world of national political campaigns – and he discovers that his unique skill set may be his best asset after all. (Premiered in 2013 at San Francisco's prestigious American Conservatory Theater, with its Canadian premiere in 2014 at Toronto's Panasonic Theatre; Cast: 2 female, 4 male)

The Ravine is about the various levels of those disenfranchised in our society, from those squatting on a hillside to those perched high in luxury highrises, with some ordinary joes in between just trying to make do. A decidedly off-kilter homeless lady of a certain age is squatting in a ravine while planning revenge on the ex-husband who abused and abandoned her 25 years ago, only to now be running for mayor. An adaptation of Chekhov's dark, comic story In the Ravine. (Premiered in 2014 at the Seneca Queen Theatre in Niagara Falls; Cast: 3 female, 3 male)

The Burden of Self-Awareness has money at the centre of a dramatic conflict of values. Michael is wealthy beyond his dreams, but after a brush with death he is a changed man. When he decides to give away his fortune, Michael's wife is alarmed by the prospect of a middle-class existence. Conspiring with a neurotic psychiatrist, a reluctant hit man and a call girl with a degree in history, she desperately fights to stop the events that her husband has set in motion. A gripping tale of sex, regret and murder.(Premiered in 2013 at the Great Canadian Theatre Company in Ottawa; Cast: 2 female, 3 male)

What people say:

"Dead Metaphor's tenacious sociopolitical context does more than target the mad, mad world we read about in the daily newspapers, it offers a brilliant satirical refuge in which to take cover." — TorontoStage.com

"[In The Ravine] Walker is talking about how power corrupts, what people will do to get it and how only the pure of heart and offbeat of mind can ever set things right. It's vintage Walker: funny, violent, compassionate and thought-provoking." — Toronto Star

"[The Burden of Self Awareness] keeps you continually off-balance, searching for true north on the characters' moral compasses and on your own. You also have no inkling of how the story will end until it does, an apt comment by Walker, a writer not unfamiliar with apt comments, on the futility of trying to control life through artificial constructs like money." — Ottawa Citizen

About the Playwright:

George F. Walker is a prolific Canadian playwright with working-class roots in Toronto's hard-luck Cabbagetown, the city's now trendy East End. Instrumental to the 1970s alternative theatre movement in Canada, the self-taught playwright has written more than 30 plays and created screenplays for several award-winning Canadian television series. His plays have been presented across Canada and the United States and in more than 700 productions internationally. His work has been honoured with two Governor General's Awards, eight Chalmers Awards, and five Dora Awards. He is also the recipient of the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement and is a Member of the Order of Canada.