About the Play:

Winner of the 2010 Governor General's Literary Award in Translation

Forests (English-language version of Forêts) is a drama by Wajdi Mouawad, translated by Linda Gaboriau. In Forests, the third script in a four-play cycle that includes Tideline and the celebrated Scorched, the teenage Loup investigates the cause of her mother's brain tumour and unravels a cycle of mother-daughter stories that flows back seven generations where the bonds of family are tested, stretched, broken and, finally, redeemed by love.

Forests is a follow-up to the acclaimed Scorched. When Aimée learns that she has an unusual brain tumour, she has to decide whether to abort her pregnancy or risk her life to have her child. Although she knows she will have to pay the ultimate price, she chooses her child, only to die when her daughter Loup is a teenager. Enraged and grief-stricken, her 16-year old daughter Loup reluctantly begins a quest to discover the origin of her mother's mysterious illness, an illness that brought on unsettling visions and prophecies before it finally claimed her life. Loup turns to her grandparents and then looks to wartime Europe before the story leads us to Loup's ancestors and the forest where they lived - and where Loup begins to unearth her family's darkest secrets. In a story that spans six generations and two continents, Wajdi Mouawad demonstrates that the bonds of family are not merely biological and cannot be contained: they are borne of love, sacrifice and deep commitment, and endure beyond the death of any single member.

Forests premiered in English-language translation in 2011 at Tarragon Theatre Mainspace in Toronto.

Cast: 5 female, 6 male (doubling)

About the Playwright:

Wajdi Mouawad is a Quebec-based Lebanese-Canadian playwright. In the introduction of his internationally popular play Scorched, he is described as "Lebanese in his childhood, French in his way of thinking and Québécois in his theatre. That's what happens when you spend your childhood in Beirut, your adolescence in Paris and then try to become an adult in Montréal." Since graduating from the French section of the National Theatre School of Canada in 1991 he has written, adapted, translated and directed stage plays for audiences of all ages. His foremost sources of inspiration are childhood, war and exile.