About the Play:

HARD TO FIND BOOK, only a very limited number of copies are still available.

Not Spain was nominated for a 1998 Governor General's Award and the Chalmer's Prize.

Not Spain is a full-length drama by Richard Sanger. It is a two-hander about an encounter between a journalist named Sophie and an inhabitant of a war zone named Andrei. Is she helping the situation or exploiting it? Not Spain delves into journalism and the conflict of war from a Canadian perspective.

Not Spain is about the events of the Balkan Wars seen through the eyes of a Canadian foreign correspondent, and a Bosnian man watching his life drastically change. Sophie is a freelance journalist who goes to a war-torn city where she encounters a Bosnian man, Andrei, who has lost everything to the war. She has everything she wants; he has nothing. Or so it appears – until we learn that neither Sophie's altruism nor Andrei's desolation are what they seem.

Not Spain premiered in 1994 at Tarragon Theatre during the Summerworks Fringe Festival in Toronto and was nominated for the Chalmers Canadian Play and the Governor-General's Literary Award. Since then the play has been produced at professional theatres across Canada, the US, and Britain.

Cast: 1 woman, 1 man

What people say:

"Wonderfully poetic and dramatic, filled with intelligence, emotion, perception and surprise." — The Toronto Star

"Driven by a poet's eye for vivid and revealing detail, Sanger's compelling drama about the experience of war–from within and without–neatly contrasts the experiences of a Canadian journalist and a resident in a war-wracked city. Sanger knows how to mould a metaphor into an original shape… Full of unexpectedly resonant moments and haunting rhythms." — NOW Magazine

"Powerful and moving writing… A pure concentrate of emotion… Sanger's spare, unsentimental script makes us question and change our ways of looking at things." — Scene Magazine

"The spareness and purity of Sanger's language convey a powerful drama of how those who have been reduced to their most basic needs and those who are still privileged cannot communicate." — Governor-General's Awards finalist citation

"Finely-crafted… A contemporary Brecht-like fable… It shows how complex human situations become further distorted by attempts to render them as formulaic news stories." — Quill and Quire

About the Playwright:

Richard Sanger is a Canadian playwright and poet whose writing has been honoured with multiple nominations for the Governor General's Award (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize). He was born in Manchester, England, to a Canadian mother and an English father, both journalists. He grew up in Ottawa, lived 10 years in Europe, and has been based in Toronto since 1987. His poems have appeared in many publications in Canada, Britain and the U.S. He has also taught at the University of Toronto, and been Writer-in-Residence at the University of New Brunswick and at the University of Calgary.