About the Play:

Zastrozzi has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues, Male Monologues, Female/Female Scenes, and Female/Male Scenes.

Somewhere Else is a collection that contains four full-length plays by George F. Walker. In his earliest plays, absurdist dramas reminiscent of Ionesco and Beckett, George F. Walker honed his considerable and unique dramatic talent along "that fine line between the serious and the comic" in settings outside the North American locales of his work since the 1980s. Somewhere Else is his own selection of four early plays that for him have stood the test of time and represent, as he once said, his "classical veneer."

Beyond Mozambique is a comedy that spoofs of the hypermelodramatic B-movie features set in tropical jungle locales. The plot finds several disoriented people – a drug-addicted, pederastic priest, a disgraced Mountie, a porn-film starlet and a demonic ex-Nazi doctor whose wife thinks she is Olga in Chekhov's Three Sisters – each in retreat from an impossible society. Unknown forces lurk ominously. (Premiered in 1974 at the Factory Lab in Toronto; Cast: 2 female, 4 male)

Zastrozzi is a comedic drama; a gothic tale of jealousy and revenge that utilizes all the baroque conventions of Jacobean tragedy. Zastrozzi is a man at the height of his power. Physically, spiritually, intellectually, he is the master criminal of all Europe and he stands poised to bring society to its knees before him. Yet rumours circulate that Zastrozzi has been neutralized, that the world is safe from Zastrozzi because he has become consumed by a singular, more personal ambition: Revenge. How far will one man go and how much carnage will he rain upon his own works to finally achieve his revenge? Zastrozzi has had over 100 productions in the English-speaking world. (Premiered in 1977 at Toronto Free Theatre; Cast: 2 female, 4 male)

Theatre of the Film Noir is a murder mystery set in the wartime Paris of 1944: German occupation has finally been lifted. While the war continues to rage elsewhere, a smokescreen of normalcy has descended upon the city. But the discovery of a murdered man sparks a new series of deceptions and desperate plays for survival as his friends, enemies, and lovers tangle in the Parisian rubble. Through the stylistic lens of the Film Noir and George F. Walker's darkly comic point of view, we are faced with the end of civilization, and the questions that come after: Is there any need for truth? Can there be guilt when there is no innocence? The only certainty in a world of crumbling facades, death, and upheaval, is that the truth is never black and white. (Premiered in 1981 at the Factory Lab in Toronto and won the Chalmers Award and was a finalist for the Governor General's Award for Drama; Cast: 1 female, 4 male)

Nothing Sacred is a re-imagining of Ivan Turgenev's classic Russian novel, Fathers and Sons. The play takes place in 1859, shortly before the emancipation of the serfs (a domestic reform that saw the end of serfdom in Russia). Two Russian university students return to their home district for the summer. Arkady Kirsanov is caught between the values of his landowning family and those of his friend, the nihilist Yevgeny Bazarov, who wants to tear down the social system so that something better can be built in its place, and who is prepared to throw bombs to further his cause. Bazarov becomes embroiled in a conflict with Kirsanov's uncle, a particularly decadent and unrepentant aristocrat. Productions of Nothing Sacred met with great success in the United States in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco and Chicago, and consolidated his popular reputation outside of Canada to such a degree that the Los Angeles Times declared it "the play of the year." (Premiered in 1988 at Toronto's Bluma Appel Theatre and won both The Governor General's and Chalmers Award; Cast: 2 female, 9 male)

About the Playwright:

George F. Walker is a prolific Canadian playwright with working-class roots in Toronto's hard-luck Cabbagetown, the city's now trendy East End. Instrumental to the 1970s alternative theatre movement in Canada, the self-taught playwright has written more than 30 plays and created screenplays for several award-winning Canadian television series. His plays have been presented across Canada and the United States and in more than 700 productions internationally. His work has been honoured with two Governor General's Awards, eight Chalmers Awards, and five Dora Awards. He is also the recipient of the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement and is a Member of the Order of Canada.