"Four seasons after her husband Tom’s disappearance, Colette remains emotionally paralyzed, isolated in a country cottage. She waits in anguish, not knowing whether he is dead or alive, but clinging to hope. A young stranger in a jean jacket waves to her from the frozen lake – a sign? She emerges to give him her husband’s parka – strangely, the boy has a likeness to Tom. What is the stranger’s connection to her geologist husband, kidnapped more than a year before by leftist guerrillas in Colombia? How does this slyly seductive young stranger happen to show up at her home in rural Ontario, thousands of miles away? He seems to know more about Colette than he should, and as he slowly insinuates himself into her life, Colette’s attentive sister, Evelyn, and her helpful neighbour Bill become increasingly alarmed. Part mystery, part moving story of vanished love, In Absentia explores the notion of disappearance, articulated in very personal terms. Through the tough, time-shifting action of the play, Colette reflects on her marriage and past love, offering rich associative memories while also uncovering the hidden and inaccessible – that which is made to disappear from view." - from the publisher
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2012, Centaur Theatre, Montreal
2012
Talonbooks
9780889227026
Stylized
Carmen explores her tensions between revolutionary and romantic love. She speaks from joining the underground resistance committing herself to the movement on the border between Chile and Argentina, a sexually passionate but emotionally impossible relationship and her quest to create space for self-love.
Stylized
The play follows a family on a journey back towards Chile from Canada on the I-5 freeway in Washington state in 1979, and on the U.S./Mexico border in 1979, 1973, 1996, and 2020. Using magic realism, these eras occur simultaneously. They drive in a convertible along the desert border between the US and Mexico, each with different emotions about the North they are leaving and the South they are approaching, reversing their refugee flight, refusing the state of exile. The father and his two young daughters encounter an increasingly fantastic range of characters. They are encircled by past, present and future, in a collective vision that takes them, and the audience, into the compelling experiences of people crossing and guarding the border. Threaded through the external journey is the internal search for home in an unstable world, confronting the costs of exile and the true nature of home.
