About the Play:

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

Sled has become a favourite of acting teachers for Male Monologues.

Sled is a full-length drama by Judith Thompson. A sprawling, mystical, and murder-filled ensemble drama that take your audience on a gripping ride through a darkly humorous and disturbing world – a single block of a multicultural Toronto neighbourhood. Sled is a searing and poetic look at ourselves, our society, and our mythology.

Sled begins and ends in the wilds of the Canadian North, a world of unforgiving isolation and mystical change. The other landscape is set in a cluster of nearby homes in Toronto neighbourhood which proves to be equally harsh and mythical under its quiet surface. There's a lounge singer, a waitress, a retired salesman and an Italian immigrant. The past influences them all, leading to violent action, the possibility of redemption, bittersweet reconciliation and ghostly interventions. Sled is a play of tragic destiny that addresses the "painful infection in our strong, our red heart," the red heart being the red maple leaf on our flag, and the pain: the painful mysteries of being human.

Sled premiered in 1997 at Tarragon Theatre Mainspace in Toronto. The play was a Finalist for the 1998 Governor General's Literary Award for Drama (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize) and won the 1998 Canadian Authors Association (CAA) Jubilee Award for Drama.

Cast: 3 female, 4 male

About the Playwright:

Judith Thompson, OC is a highly esteemed Canadian playwright and educator. She has twice won the Governor General's Literary Award for Drama for White Biting Dog and The Other Side of the Dark. Other often-produced works include Sled, The Crackwalker, I Am Yours, Lion in the Streets and many more. In 2006 she was invested as an Officer in the Order of Canada, and in 2008 she became the first Canadian to be awarded the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize honouring the best English-language women writers worldwide for her play Palace of the End. She is currently a professor at the University of Guelph for the School of English and Theatre Studies teaching courses in acting and playwriting.