About the Play:

Insomnia is a full-length comedic drama by Daniel Brooks and Guillermo Verdecchia. John is a failing writer with a burning desire to save the world, as he sleeplessly struggles to complete his masterpiece. It's enough to keep a guy up at night! Insomnia asks, do healthy skepticism and reasonable doubt turn into paranoia and paralysis?

Insomnia – created jointly by the tandem of Daniel Brooks and Guillermo Verdecchia, with Brooks responsible for most of the writing and Verdecchia handling the bulk of the direction – is about a man losing his grip on reality. Who ever said there's no rest for the wicked? Everyone knows that the corrupt sleep like babes in their beds. It's the ineffectual who can't get any peace. John is a sleep-deprived man skeptical to the point of tyranny. So rigorously demanding of the world and himself that he inhabits a waking nightmare of doubts – doubts about his disintegrating relationship with his dissatisfied wife; doubts about his sputtering career as a writer; doubts about the state of the world in general. He has lost the power to sleep, he is driving himself and his wife to distraction. Do insomniacs sleep without knowing it? That's one of many questions behind Insomnia, which treads the fine line between the sleeping and waking worlds.

Insomnia premiered in 1998 at The Theatre Centre in Toronto and was nominated for several Dora Mavor Moore Awards, and the Chalmers Award. Since then the play was revived by the authors in 1999 and toured to the Festival de Théâtre des Amériques (now Festival TransAmériques) and again in 2006 at Buddies in Bad Time Theatre in Toronto. It has been mounted by high schools and community theatres as far away as Greece.

Cast: 2 female, 2 male

What people say:

"Insomnia asks, do healthy skepticism and reasonable doubt turn into paranoia and paralysis? Unfolding in a series of ever more surreal vignettes, Insomnia employs a powerful brand of non-linear, disorienting story-telling that skilfully focuses an audience's attention." — NOW

"This is the kind of play where you have to relax and enjoy the ride and not worry if events on stage seem hard to explain. Even as the play seems crashing towards a gruesome and almost Shakespearean tragic ending, it sets up a beautifully-rendered final scene which, through no small amount of rug-pulling, provides at least some sort of explanation for what has transpired. This is one play unlikely to put you to sleep." — Torontoist

About the Playwrights:

Daniel Brooks (1958-2023) was a Canadian director, writer, actor, producer, and teacher. He was a prolific and versatile artist whose innovation and risk-taking have made him a leader within the Canadian cultural landscape. The recipient of the inaugural Siminovitch Prize in Theatre (Canada's most prestigious arts award), his work has toured across Canada and around the world.

Guillermo Verdecchia is a Canadian writer of drama, fiction, and film, as well as a director and actor. He is the recipient of a Governor-General's Award for Drama for his play Fronteras Americanas and a four-time winner of the Chalmers Canadian Play Award. His work has translated into Spanish and Italian, produced in Europe, Australia, and the US, and is studied in Latin America, Europe, and North America. As a director and actor he has worked at theatres across Canada, from the Stratford Festival to the Vancouver East Cultural Centre.