About the Play:

Winner of the 1999 Governor General's Literary Award for Drama (Canadian equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize)

The Drawer Boy is a full-length drama by Michael Healey. Based on the making of Theatre Passe Muraille's landmark The Farm Show. A young actor from the big city lives with two aging bachelor farmers to gather stories about rural life. The farmers' lives are irrevocably altered when art attempts to imitate life and the line between truth and fiction is crossed.

The Drawer Boy is an elegant testimony to the transcendent nature of fiction and the healing power of truth. A self-absorbed young actor from the big city arrives on a small farm to do hands-on research for an upcoming role in a play about country life. He is sent to live with two ageing bachelor farmers and unwittingly stumbles upon the truth about their past and as a result, their lives are forever altered when art attempts to imitate life and the line between truth and fiction is crossed. What begins as an amusing portrayal of rural and urban culture-clash, slowly peels away layers of forgotten truths and lies, exposing hidden secrets of love and tragedy.

The Drawer Boy premiered in 1999 at Theatre Passe Murialle in Toronto. Michael Healey's first full-length play, it was given a host of Canadian awards, including Dora Award (Canada's leading theatre award) for Outstanding New Play; Governor General's Award for English-language Drama; and the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award. This character-driven play continues to delight enthralled houses across Canada, the United States, and around the world. In 2001, The Drawer Boy made Time Magazine's top ten list as "a new classic," and in 2004 it became the most produced play in American regional theatres. John Mahoney, most well known for his role as Martin Crane on the hit TV show Frasier, appeared in the show at the Papermill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey; in Chicago with Steppenwolf; and at the Peacock Theatre in Dublin, Ireland.

Cast: 3 men

What people say:

"The Drawer Boy is ... arguably on a very short list of the greatest Canadian plays ever written." — The Globe and Mail

"The Drawer Boy is a beautifully written play. It moves from toughness and hilarity to something devastating and tender … it is one of the few plays to create an authentic tradition in our culture." — Michael Ondaatje, author of The English Patient in BRICK Literary Journal

"The Drawer Boy is affecting precisely because it refuses to squeeze all the sentimental possibilities from the bittersweet history it describes." — The New York Times

"Far and away the finest new Canadian drama to grace a Toronto stage this season. Richly textured, The Drawer Boy touches the heart and ind in equal measure." — Toronto Star

"Wonderfully understated. Funny and deeply affecting." — The Toronto Sun

"Healey's created a magnificent work, rich in compassion and universal in scope. Shows every sign of becoming a Canadian classic." — NOW

"Sheer magic … the crowd stormed to its feet, cheering with an enthusiasm usually found only at rock concerts." — Maclean’s magazine

About the Playwright:

Michael Healey is a renowned Canadian playwright and actor. He trained as an actor at Toronto's Ryerson Theatre School in the early 1980s. After ten years working as an actor on stages across Canada, his first play, a solo one-act called Kicked, was produced at the Fringe of Toronto Festival in 1996. Since then, he has become an exceptional voice in Canadian theatre. With an outstanding breadth of work, he has won a number of awards as a playwright, including Dora Mavor Moore awards, a Governor General's Literary Award for Drama, and a Chalmers Canadian Play Award, as well as awards across Canada and internationally.