About the Play:

The Real World? (English version of Le vrai monde?) is a full-length drama by Michel Tremblay, translated by John Van Burek and Bill Glassco. The mother of a precocious young playwright takes issue with his latest play: not only does it put private family matters centre stage, it liberally blends fiction with truth. Should or can playwrights truly "write what they know"? If they use their family members as characters in a play, what happens when those family members object to their theatrical selves?

The Real World explores the phenomena of literary creation, family taboos, love, and hate. Claude, a frustrated, aspiring playwright returns home with his first play. His staged family and actual family experience the inevitable clash between the theatrical world, which lies to tell the truth, and the "real world", whose veneer of reality hides a thousand half-truths. Claude faces a tough question: does the play he has written contain a fair representation of his family, or a false one? The audience gets a chance to judge for themselves, since both families appear on stage throughout. A play within a play, The Real World? remains a ground-breaking work about art, autobiography and authority.

The Real World? had its English-language premiere in 1988 at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto and was revived there in 1989 and 2012. It was performed at Tron Theatre in 1989 during Glasgow's Mayfest, the second largest arts festival in Britain, and enjoyed a sold-out run at London's respected Soho Theatre in 1990.

Cast: 4 female, 3 male

What people say:

"It is Tremblay's triumph that The Real World finds interesting new ways of expressing and illuminating… ideas… with writing of rare musical beauty." — Toronto Star

"Tremblay's strength lies in his depiction of the ambiguities of family ties, the resigned compromises, grudging understandings, the modi vivendi tacitly arrived at, often to the angry amazement of outsiders." — Financial Times (UK)

About the Playwright:

Michel Tremblay has been one of Québec's most prominent playwrights since the end of the 1960s. One of the most produced and the most prominent playwrights in the history of Canadian theatre, he has received countless prestigious honours and accolades. His dramatic, literary and autobiographical works, originally written in French, have long enjoyed remarkable international popularity and translations of his plays have received huge success worldwide.