About the Play:

Paradise Garden is a full-length drama by Lucia Frangione. A modern romance against all odds. Local boy Day, a free spirit, lives next door to worldly Layla, a career-driven intellectual. The two have nothing in common. Or do they? Over time these divergent souls come to understand each other in a way neither thought possible. Paradise Garden is a contemporary tale of romance and cultural divides so engaging it will change the way you see the girl (or boy) next door!

Paradise Garden tells the story of an unconventional, neighbourly romance between Day McKinnon, an attractive 27-year-old free-spirit, and Leyla Zeki, a globetrotting Muslim woman who has taken up residence next door. In the gold-rush era of the 1850s, the McKinnons settled on an island off the west coast of Canada, where the first thing they did was to turn this "wilderness" into an English country garden complete with vegetables, flowers, fruit trees and an elegant gazebo. After six generations, times and circumstances have changed, the family estate has been subdivided, the flowers have gone wild, the pear-tree has rotted and the heritage house has been carved up into a duplex, the property now divided in two by an ugly hedge. The McKinnons now live in one side of the property, while the other has been sold to an immigrant family recently arrived from Turkey. The heirs apparent to both families, Day McKinnon and Leyla Zeki, fancy themselves to be sophisticated citizens of the world, tolerating with thinly disguised amusement their ancestors' "outdated" formalities and rituals. So alienated are they that they spend much of their time only half-jokingly speaking of themselves in the third person. Yet Leyla recognizes something fundamental and mysterious in the vestiges of the old garden: its tumbled and overgrown ruins remind her of the Paradise Garden of Judeo-Christian/Islamic tradition — its layout in the four cardinal directions, its allusions to the seasons and the elements, and its walls that surround a place of secret love. For Day, however, despite, or perhaps because of the fact that he has discovered a long-buried family secret, "The problem with being born into paradise is: eventually you inherit it. There's something to be said for the bedlam of hell. Heaven is a lot of upkeep." Abandoning their families for their careers, they are reunited years later having discovered that love is not just something that happens to us, but something that we must build by hand in the wilderness of our lives.

Paradise Garden was first produced in 2010 at The Arts Club Theatre Stanley Theatre in Vancouver.

Cast: 3 female, 2 male

What people say:

"Luscious epic bears fruit in the garden." — The Province

"Playwright and actor Lucia Frangione enters risky emotional territory in Paradise Garden." — The Georgia Straight

About the Playwright:

Lucia Frangione is an internationally produced award-winning Canadian playwright and actor, best known for performing in her own works. The author of over twenty-five plays, she received training through Studio 58 and Rosebud School of the Arts.