About
the Play:
Inoculations is a collection of four full-length plays by
Darren O'Donnell. These four
plays – White Mice,
Who Shot Jacques Lacan?,
Radio Rooster Says That's Bad and
Over – written by
Darren O'Donnell for
his theatre company, Mammalian Diving Reflex, will challenge your
politics, your ontology and everything you hold to be safe, stable
and sacrosanct.
Over is a vaudevillian exploration of the possibilities of
the paranormal as a legitimate agent in ordinary lives. (Premiered in
1993 at Café Verité in Toronto; Cast: 1 woman, 1 man)
Who Shot Jacques Lacan?
is a
multi-character rhythmic, movement oriented murder mystery based
loosely on the mysterious death of the French psychoanalyst and
cultural philosopher Jacques Lacan. (Premiered in 1994 at Buddies in
Bad Times Theatre in Toronto; Cast: 7 performers)
Radio Rooster Says That's Bad is a full-length solo
performance show that employs rhythm, rhyme, and repetition to
explore millennial fever, paranoia, and psychosis. (Premiered in 1993
at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in Toronto; Cast: 1 man)
White Mice is a cartoon-like exposé of the virulent racism
at the core of Canada. Robert and Douglas are two white-furred mice
living in peacefully in downtown Toronto, until one day Robert begins
coming home with more and more information concerning the state of
racism in Canada. The two mice begin to question the function of
racism, whiteness, and capitalism as they struggle to keep up with
their rapidly expanding consciousness. (Premiered in 1998 at The
Theatre Centre in Toronto; Cast: 2 men)
Inoculations documents
Darren O'Donnell's
progress over a decade, from the first presentation of Over
in 1993 at Buddies in Bad Times
Theatre's Rhubarb! festival
to 2000's highly acclaimed, Dora-winning presentation of White
Mice at Toronto's Theatre Passe
Muraille. Covering subjects as diverse as racism and the light
spectrum, these plays are provocative, innovative and riotously funny
– as entertaining to
experience on paper as on stage.
What people say:
"No one can wring involving
theatre from political and moral observations as acidly and
entertainingly as writer/director Darren O'Donnell
... His plays, like Radio Rooster Says That's Bad
and Who Shot Jacques Lacan?,
are a wild mixture of philosophy, rant, cant and vaudeville. Often
performed at breakneck speed, they make you sit up and think, laugh
and then think some more." — NOW Magazine
(Toronto)
"A touch of the Three Stooges
mixed with a punch of Ren and Stimpy, just enough to bind the kind
of bleak absurdist gruel that Beckett used in Endgame and Waiting for
Godot." — The Sun
(Toronto)
"Brilliant conception ... a
highly amusing show and a provocative piece of theatre that insists
on disturbing its audiences complacency." — The
Globe and Mail
About the Playwright:
Darren O'Donnell is a Canadian playwright, urban cultural
planner, novelist, essayist, filmmaker, performance director and the
Artistic and Founding Director of the internationally known
relational-aesthetics company Mammalian Diving Reflex. With a BFA in
theatre and a M.Sc. in urban planning from the University of Toronto,
he brings a rigorous and robust social scientific approach to his
art-making and the advice he offers to others through his consulting
practice.