top ten thousand of all time | playwright's notes, 2004

Writing my notes for the Top Ten Thousand program, I happened upon these, from the play's September 2004 run at Fire Exit Theatre, in Calgary - where I saw Diane Tucker's play Here Breaks The Heart premiere a couple weeks ago. Bravo, Fire Exit!

There came a time when the theatre company I founded was on the ropes. My cohorts and I laid ourselves off, we put Pacific Theatre on barest life support, not knowing if the patient would ever recover, and I spent well over a year unemployed. Before then, most of my artistic work was as an actor, but during that long dark night of the vocational soul, I kept alive creatively by writing. THE TOP TEN THOUSAND OF ALL TIME came out of that period, written entirely as an act of self-indulgence, a kind of messing-around-in-the-sandbox exercise I was sure would never be performed. To this day I'm astonished that such a quirky and personal piece manages to connect with an audience of anybody but my own peculiar self - sometimes quite powerfully. Check your eschatology at the door, crank up the volume and enjoy!

The Top Ten Thousand plays Pacific Theatre this week only, Wed through Sat

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