About the Play:

Marion Bridge was a Finalist for the 1999 Governor General's Award for Drama (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize)

Marion Bridge is a full-length drama by Daniel MacIvor. When three daughters go home to Cape Breton, they must confront not only their dying mother, but also the lives they have come to lead. Trapped by life choices and unfulfilled expectations that have left them isolated, the three women search for the courage to create a new family from the remnants of the old. Daniel MacIvor's perfectly crafted Cape Breton family drama is always a sure-fire crowdpleaser.

Marion Bridge is a humorous and touching story set in the kitchen of a family home in Nova Scotia. Three sisters in their thirties come "home" to care for their dying mother. Nothing, of course, has turned out exactly the way anyone imagined it would. Each in their own way tries to deal with the painful loneliness that has come to rule her day-to-day life. The ideas of what they thought they wanted to be and what their mother wanted them to be is all the more torturous as the daughters begin to finally understand what they are and why they are that way. Marion Bridge is the humorous and touching story by Daniel MacIvor that demonstrates the absolute power of realization and how it heals as much as it harms.

Marion Bridge premiered in 1998 at Mulgrave Road Theatre in Guysborough, Nova Scotia and received its off-Broadway premiere in New York in 2005. The play enjoyed widespread acceptance among leading regional theatres across Canada and in the US, and is regularly performed in community theatre productions.

Cast: 4 female, 1 male

What people say:

"This moving drama, which tiptoes toward sentimentality without ever reaching it, is the most surprising play that [MacIvor's] ever written. When was the last time you saw a drama about three distinct, complex women that had nothing to do with their relationships with men?" — New York Times

"An intimate, swiftly moving family drama … a sparkling crisp script, beautifully structured, with snappy, funny lines that dart in and out quickly like swallows, not interrupting the emotional drama of the story." — Halifax Chronicle-Herald

"A compelling and strikingly original theatrical text … It might be MacIvor's finest work yet." — Daily News

"In Daniel MacIvor's Marion Bridge ... three sisters are radically distinctive characters written with brilliant specificity. ...MacIvor's lovely, deeply humanistic comedy-drama ...builds inevitably toward the transcendent." — Los Angeles Times

About the Playwright:

Daniel MacIvor is one of Canada's most accomplished playwrights and performers. Winner of the Governor General's Literary Award (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize), the prestigious Elinore and Lou Siminovitch Prize, and many others, his plays have been met with acclaim throughout North America.