About the Plays:

Canada's top playwright takes on teen pregnancy in two comic dramas for young-adult audiences.

Moss Park and Tough! contains two full-length comedic dramas by George F. Walker: Audiences first meet Bobby and Tina in Tough! when the hapless couple are 19 and Tina unexpectedly pregnant. The sequel Moss Park again features Tina and Bobby. Tina now has a toddler, is pregnant again and is about to be evicted. Little wonder that she is wracked with fear about the future.

Tough! eavesdrops on Tina, her boyfriend Bobby and her best friend Jill, in a park. Young, sharp-tongued Tina summons her perpetually befuddled, self-absorbed nineteen-year-old boyfriend Bobby, whom she's caught making out with some girl at a party, to a tattered city playground. She's got something to tell him, and she's brought her tough-talking pal Jill, who can't stand the guy, along as backup. Bobby doesn't know what he's walking into. In fact, he's been planning to break up but the stakes quickly skyrocket when Tina reveals that she's pregnant. Tough! has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops, not only because of its sharply drawn young characters, but because, unlike most theatre about teen pregnancy, the most important changes take place inside the male character.

Tough! was first produced in early 1993 by Green Thumb Theatre for Young People and opened at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. It then went on to complete an eleven-week national tour and played to packed houses at Great Canadian Theatre Company (Ottawa), Factory Theatre (Toronto), and Phoenix Theatre (Edmonton). Since then this much-produced young-adult play has been a nearly continuous success in Canada, especially as programming for younger audiences. It has been translated into six languages, and is regularly performed in theatres all over the world.

Cast: 2 female, 1 male

What people say:

"Walker has an eye for the ridiculous and an imagination that packs his plays with action." — New York Times

Moss Park is the sequel to Tough! Two years have passed in the lives of the on-again, off-again couple who meet up again at the same neighbourhood park. Tina and Bobby aren't married, or even living together, but they have a young child, and another is on the way – a fact Bobby learns from Tina early in the play. Bobby wants Tina to take him back – he's always wanted that – but she has serious doubts about his ability to hold down a job. In this fast-paced dark comedy, Bobby's plans for big money collide with Tina's dreams of home, sweet home, and we root for them even as we are exasperated by them. Funny, touching, and raw, Moss Park, finds hope in unlikely places.

Moss Park was first produced in late 2013 at in the Mainspace at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto. The play has become a favourite scene study vehicle in acting classes and workshops.

Cast: 1 female, 1 male

What people say:

"Only in a Walker play do we find ourselves lurching from laughter to heartbreak and back again in the space of a few seconds." — Toronto Star

"The combination of blunt honesty and emotional extremity combusts in comic shock. "I want to care about you," the stunned Bobby tells Tina, "but I can't." Man-hating Jill warns, "We're going to kick you to fucking death, okay?" while Tina vacillates between screaming at Bobby and tenderly telling him to put his head between his knees when he starts to hyperventilate; she can't help but love this guy. He cries after sex. Who could resist?" — Georgia Straight

"The strength of Walker's writing is his ability to depict deep pain with a light touch." — National Post

About the Playwright:

George F. Walker is a prolific Canadian playwright with working-class roots in Toronto's hard-luck Cabbagetown, the city's now trendy East End. Instrumental to the 1970s alternative theatre movement in Canada, the self-taught playwright has written more than 30 plays and created screenplays for several award-winning Canadian television series. His plays have been presented across Canada and the United States and in more than 700 productions internationally. His work has been honoured with two Governor General's Awards, eight Chalmers Awards, and five Dora Awards. He is also the recipient of the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement and is a Member of the Order of Canada.