About the Play:

Watching Glory Die is a full-length drama by Judith Thompson. A tragic story of death and imprisonment based on real-world events, this tour-de-force solo play is a bold, captivating portrait of a young girl, a guard, and a mother who are inextricably linked within a system of indifference.

Watching Glory Die explores the horrors of the teenager's inexorable, downward spiral to death behind bars. Inspired by the real-life case of teen Ashley Smith who committed suicide in prison when corrections officers failed to intervene, the play takes a deliberately fictional approach, focusing on the character of Glory, and her life inside and outside of a federal correctional facility. Glory is a troubled 19-year-old inmate, incarcerated for very minor offences at age 14, who, in her solitary prison cell, is tormented by hallucinations. While she battles the creature in her mind, her compulsive, rebellious nature leads to a non-ending, ever-spiralling clash with Corrections Canada. Her suburban adoptive mother Rosellen struggles to remain connected to her daughter in the maze of prison bureaucracy, believing that she can sense Glory's feelings no matter the distance. In the prison halls, Gail, a working-class guard, glides between her conscience and her professional duties, knowing her actions could ultimately lead to a tragic end. Searingly honest and profoundly moving, Watching Glory Die takes a bold dramatic leap from the news headlines to forge the kind of visceral lyricism that is the hallmark of Judith Thompson at her most powerful.

Judith Thompson returned to acting after a 35-year hiatus, performing in her own one-woman play, Watching Glory Die, premiering in 2014 at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre before moving to the Berkeley Street Theatre in Toronto. Since then the play has be mounted by professional theatres across Canada and at the Cockpit Theatre in London.

Cast: 1 woman

What people say:

"Watching Glory Die shocks, clarifies and engages." — Post City (Toronto)

"A brilliant, powerful and moving story of three women caught in tragic circumstances." — The Chronicle Herald

"Watching Glory Die is an utterly disturbing but eye-opening call to address deep-rooted, fatal attitudes toward women and youth." — This Magazine (Toronto)

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.