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Fragments of a Farewell Letter Read by Geologists

Fragments of a Farewell Letter Read by Geologists
Your Price: $18.95 CDN
Author: Normand Chaurette
Translated by: Linda Gaboriau
Publisher: Talonbooks (cover image may change)
Format: Softcover
# of Pages: 95
Pub. Date: 1998
ISBN-10: 08892240005
ISBN-13: 9780889224001
Cast Size: 1 female, 6 male

About the Play:

Fragments of a Farewell Letter Read by Geologists (English version of Fragments d'une lettre d'adieu lus par des géologues) is a drama by Normand Chaurette, translated by Linda Gaboriau. An engineering project testing new technology for water purification in Cambodia goes dreadfully wrong and the chief engineer dies. His team of four geologists faces a commissioned inquiry into the mysterious tragedy. The only evidence, apart from the remains of his torso, is a letter, possibly a suicide note, in which the same introductory lines are repeated over and over again. Was he murdered? Did he kill himself?

Fragments of a Farewell Letter Read by Geologists is a dramatized quasi-judicial inquiry in which four geologists are interrogated about the death of Toni van Saikin, project leader of a failed humanitarian expedition to the Mekong Delta, Cambodia. It's a heart of darkness experience for the five scientists as they battle torrential tropical rain, floods, venomous snakes and insects, dysentery, bacteria, isolation and complete failure of their goal – the production of safe drinking water. The mysterious death of van Saikin brings the project abruptly to an end, but three small fragments of a letter written by van Saikin before his death and containing phrases like "when you read this letter" initiate an inquiry. Four geologists, another engineer and the dead man's wife testify before the inquiry's skeptical, probing chairman. The geologists all give prepared statements with minutely detailed accounts before the inquiry, but none is able to provide a definitive explanation of the circumstances surrounding the man's mysterious demise. Rational thought and scientific jargon cloud the way to real understanding. Was he murdered? Did he commit suicide? Or was he, as several of them suggest, "a man who had decided to die?"

Fragments d'une lettre d'adieu lus par des géologues premiered in 1986 at Théâtre de Quat'Sous in Montréal and was nominated for a Governor General's Award in 1987 and won the Prix de l'Association québécoise des critiques de théâtre for Best Play Produced in 1988. The English-language translation of Fragments of a Farewell Letter Read by Geologists premiered in 1992 at Equity Showcase Theatre in Toronto. Since then it has had numerous staged readings and a notable production in 2005 by Screaming Flea Theatre in an SFU classroom at Harbour Centre in Vancouver.

Cast: 1 female, 6 male

What people say:

"A massive and finally thrilling piece of post-modern writing about the relationship between man and nature, the decay of social idealism, the fact of death, and – above all – the moral and intellectual failure of late 20th century academic science ... a text that confronts, with rare courage, some of the most frightening questions facing our civilisation." — Spectrum

"All of our deaths are both inevitable and incomprehensible. All of us know what it's like to be a soul trapped in a mortal body observing the overwhelming realm of the senses. Reason can never answer the deepest questions of the spirit. Art doesn't always answer them either, but it can pose them in a compelling way – as it does here." — The Georgia Straight

About the Playwright:

Normand Chaurette (1954-2022) was a Québec playwright, translator and non-fiction author based in his native Montréal. A three-time winner of the Governor General's Award for French-language drama (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize), he excelled on all levels of writing: his plays and translations of plays have been staged and acclaimed internationally, particularly in the U.S. and Europe. His own plays have also been translated into several languages.

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