About the Play:

Winner of the 1997 Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award

On the Job is a full-length drama by David Fennario. The renowned author of Balconville, established his theatrical voice in this his first play, an exploration of working-class frustration and a look at the Canadian class structure.

On the Job is about an overtime revolt in a dress factory. It is Christmas Eve, 1970. In the shipping room of a Montréal dress factory, the workers frustrated by lack of job opportunities and emboldened by smuggled liquor, decide to go on strike. The gesture proves futile and they wind up at home, jobless, with nothing to show but their Christmas bonuses.

On the Job premiered in 1975 at the venerable Centaur Theatre, the oldest English-language theatre in Montréal and won the prestigious Chalmers Award. The play starred Hollywood mainstay Bruce Greenwood (Star Wars and I, Robot), opened to rave reviews, and became the breakthrough production for the Centaur Theatre Company. Subsequently, it has been performed at the National Arts Centre, Ottawa; revived by Centaur Theatre; and staged at the Arts Club Theatre, Vancouver.

Cast: 8 male

What people say:

"Fennario's On the Job hits the jackpot." — Montreal Star

"Vibrates with the rough and ready energy of a street fight." — Quill & Quire

"When a final analysis is made of twentieth-century Canadian theater, the most significant political playwright will undoubtedly be David Fennario." — Canadian Book Review

About the Playwright:

David Fennario is an anglophone playwright and a novelist born David Wiper in Montréal. He grew up and still lives in the working class district of Verdun-Pointe St. Charles, and zoomed from obscurity to national fame in 1979 with his play Balconville. His pen name, given to him by a girlfriend, was part of a Bob Dylan song, Pretty Peggy-O. He worked in a number of small jobs before he enrolled in Dawson College. With his teachers encouragement, he developed and fine tuned his creative writing skills. He was the first writer-in-residence at Montréal's Centaur Theatre, has won the Chalmers award twice, and received the Prix Pauline Julien from the United Steelworkers' Union.