About the Play:

The collection The Russian Play and Other Short Works contains four one-act plays from acclaimed playwright Hannah Moscovitch. In The Russian Play, the flower-shop girl tells the story of her love for the gravedigger. Essay casts a teaching assistant in the shadow of his professor as they argue the merits of a female student's paper. In USSR, a young woman relates her journey to Canada from Russia, and Mexico City follows a couple on their vacation in Mexico. The Russian Play can be – and often is – performed as a stand-alone one-act (popular choice for fringe festivals), but has been performed together with Essay or Mexico City as a double bill to create a full evening of entertainment.

The Russian Play is a bittersweet ode to the dangerous joys of love and life in Stalin-era Russia. Sonya, a young flower-shop girl from the small-town of Vladekstov, falls in love with a gravedigger named Piotr. What can go wrong? Well, it's a Russian play, so: everything. In this fairy-tale romance, he breaks her heart. Her attempt to find happiness with the rich and well-connected Kostya ends in disaster. She recounts her story of love and heartbreak with stunning directness and savage humour. This edgy, wildly original homage to the bleak realism and humour of the great Russian playwrights will first make you laugh, and then take your breath away. (Premiered in 2006 as part of the SummerWorks Theatre Festival in Toronto, where it won the Outstanding New Play Award; Cast: 1 woman, 2 men)

What people say about The Russian Play:

"The Russian Play resembles nothing so much as a head-on collision between a pony cart filled with the plays of Anton Chekhov and a sports car filled with post-modern works, the latter no doubt driven by a Stalinist drunk on cheap vodka." — The Toronto Sun

"The Russian Play is a scintillating exercise in style (owing more to Chekhov's short stories than his plays) which also manages to be a moving meditation on poverty, oppression and love." — The National Post

"The storytelling is spare, compelling, humorous and heartbreaking." — CBC Radio

"It's that rarest of all theatrical experiments: a clever satire with a beating heart." — The Globe and Mail

"The Russian Play is a delightful piece of theatre that feels like a modern folktale – The Flower Girl and The Gravedigger – a spoof on Russian drama and a poke at those who are drooping and pining for love." — Vancouver Courier

Essay is about gender politics in a contemporary academic institution. When a teaching assistant rejects his female student's essay proposal, he finds himself locked in a conflict of language, sex and power. A response to David Mamet's Oleanna, Essay ventures into the highly charged realm of gender and classroom politics, and explores the limits of inclusion. (First Produced in 2008 at Factory Theatre in Toronto; Cast: 1 woman, 2 men)

USSR: Through a Russian émigré's struggle with Canadian culture, USSR explores the impact of the collapse of the Soviet Union on the lives of Russian women. USSR offers a complex portrait of the "Natashas" – Russian mail order brides – who trade love for the dream of first world security. (First Produced in 2007 at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto; Cast: 1 woman)

Mexico City is a short satiric romance set in the Mexican capital in the 1960s. Can a vacation to Mexico City salvage a failing marriage? It turns out both Henry and Alice have differing ideas on what the vacation means. Mexico City explores tourism as voyeurism and the battle of the sexes. (First Produced: 2007 at Summer Works Theatre Festival in Toronto; Cast: 1 woman, 1 man)

What people say:

"The imagination of Hannah Moscovitch makes the audience sit up and squirm for all the right reasons." — CBC Radio

"One of Canada's most promising playwrights in the independent theatre scene." — The National Post

"Mexico City proves Moscovitch can do funny, too." — Vancouver Courier

About the Playwright:

Hannah Moscovitch is an acclaimed Canadian playwright and TV writer. Her plays have been widely produced across Canada, as well as in the United States, Britain, Europe, Australia and Japan. She has been honoured with numerous awards, including the Governor General's Literary Award for drama (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize), and the prestigious Windham Campbell Literary Prize administered by Yale University (she is the first Canadian playwright to win the prize). She's twice been a finalist for the Governor General's Award, and twice for the Siminovitch Prize, as well as the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize honouring the best English-language women writers worldwide.