This+is+a+Play+-+Here+Lies+Henry

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__Iya's Research__

Definition of Minimalism: ** minimalism **, a literary or dramatic style or principle based on the extreme restriction of a work's contents to a bare minimum of necessary elements, normally within a short form, e.g. a haiku, epigram, brief dramatic sketch, or monologue. Minimalism is often characterized by a bareness or starkness of vocabulary or of dramatic setting, and a reticence verging on or even becoming silence. The term has been borrowed from modern sculpture and painting, and applied especially to the later dramatic work of the Irish writer Samuel Beckett, whose 30‐second play //Breath// (1969), for example, has no characters and no words. []

More Research by Iya Information is split between the two plays on my page and is mostly reviews ~Iya

__Whitney Slipp__ Daniel MacIvor was born in 1962 on July 23. He is a Canadian actor, playwright, theatre director and film director. He was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia and attended Dalhousie University in Halifax. He then went on to attend George Brown Collage in Toronto, Ontario where he finished out his degree. MacIvor started the theatre company “Da Da Kamera” in Toronto and is now known as one of Canada’s best known playwrights. Some of his works include: //Never Swim Alone, This is a Play, Monster, Marion Bridge, You Are Here, Cul-de-sac,// and //A Beautiful View.// Five of MacIvor’s plays were published //as I Still Love You// in 2006, in celebration of the 20th anniversary of “Da Da Kamera”. //Never Swim Alone, The Soldier Dreams, You Are Here, In on It,// and //A Beautiful View//) won MacIvor a coveted Governor General’s Award for Drama. More recently, MacIvor has written, co-written and directed several independent films, which are usually made in his home province of Nova Scotia. They include //Past Perfect, Marion Bridge, Whole New Thing// and //Wilby Wonderful//. His own appearances include //The Five Senses//. MacIvor has worked closely on some solo works with director Daniel Brooks in creating both //Monster, House, Here Lies Henry// and //Cul-de-sac.// These particular productions incorporate a minimalist and meta-theatrical style. MacIvor portrays one character who speaks directly to the audience, acknowledging their presence and the direct address of the audience continues in //Monster// and //Cul-de-sac.// MacIvor portrays many characters throughout the piece and this direct approach is cut up by dialogue between these characters. MacIvor has received many awards other than his highly notable Governor General’s Award for Drama in 2006, as mentioned above. __List of Play Awards:__ In 1998, MacIvor won the award for overall excellence at the New York International Fringe Festival for his play // Never Swim Alone //. [|[4]] In 2002, his play // In On It // earned him a GLAAD award and a Village Voice Obie Award. [|[4]] In 2008, he was awarded the prestigious [|Siminovitch Prize in Theatre], which is a Canadian theatre award that recognizes Canadians for their work in the areas of design, direction and playwriting in Canada. [|[5]] __List of Film Awards:__ In 1993, MacIvor was awarded a Genie for his short film // The Fairy Who Didn’t Want to be a Fairy Anymore. // [|[6]] In 2004, he won a Chlotrudis award and Genie award for his screenplay adaptation of his play // [|Marion Bridge] //. [|[6]] // See Bob Run // (1989), da da kamera, directed by Ken McDougall __List of Works in his Career:__ - // Yes I Am and // Who Are You? (1989), Buddies in Bad Times, directed by Edward Roy - // Wild Abandon // (1990), Theatre Passe Muraille, directed by Vinetta Stromberg - // Somewhere I Have Never Travelled // (1990), // Tarragon Theatre // directed by Andy McKim - // Never Swim Alone // (1991), da da kamera, directed by Ken McDougall - // 2-2 Tango // (1991), Buddies in Bad Times, directed by Ken McDougall - // Jump // (1992), Theatre Passe Muraille, directed by Daniel Brooks - // This is a Play // (1992), da da kamera, directed by Ken MacDougall - // The Lorca Play // (1992), da da kamera, co-directed by MacIvor and Daniel Brooks - // In On It // (2000), Edinburgh Festival, directed by MacIvor - // Cul-de-Sac // (2003), da da Kamera, directed by Daniel Brooks - // A Beautiful View // (2006), da da kamera - // How It Works // (2007), // Tarragon Theatre

MORE TO COME! //


 * Michael Woodside

This is a play - Production notes:​

This is a play was first produced by Da Da Kamera and The Fringe of Toronto at the Bathurst Street Theatre in June and July 1992.

//This is a play and metatheatre://

Short piece of metatheatre satirising bad plays and the players that play them by Daniel Macivor **

Metatheatre: now a mainstream genre where one may find comedian dancers offering running commentary on the pretensions of whatever contemporary dance piece they’re performing, or a tubby Englishman in a skeleton suit explaining at length the various ways in which the show he’s in is not a spectacular, or an even-toned American deconstructing The Event we poor fools call theatre by means of a dramatic monologue. Or this play within a play...

The shell play is something about lettuce and families. But, aside from that the shell play is a pretty funny bad play.

//MacIvor’s spoof sets up (and knocks down) what actors think about during performance, sending audiences into howls of recognition.//

So, like, if even the audience, and it’s a pretty mainstream audience they’re pulling, like grandparents taking the grandkids out for the afternoon, if they can ‘recognise’ the meta of theatre and laugh like it was slapstick, we must conclude that deconstruction is now family entertainment.

[]

Example of Metatheatre in Hamlet:

[|Shakespeare] employs metatheatrical devices throughout his plays. Some examples include //[|The Taming of the Shrew]//, //[|Hamlet]//, //[|A Midsummer Night's Dream]//, and //[|The Tempest]//. In each of these plays there is a play or [|masque] presented as part of the larger plot. In //Hamlet//, there occurs the following exchange between [|Hamlet] and [|Polonius]: Hamlet: [...] **My lord, you played once i'th'university, you say.** Polonius: **That I did my lord, and was accounted a good actor.** Hamlet: **And what did you enact?** Polonius: **I did enact [|Julius Caesar]. I was killed i'th'Capitol. Brutus killed me.** Hamlet: **It was a brute part of him to kill so capital a calf there.**

//[|Hamlet]// (3.2.87-93).

If the only significance of this exchange lay in its mentioning of fictional dramatic characters within another play, it would be called a [|metadramatic] moment. Within its original context, however, there is a greater, metatheatrical resonance. Critics assume that the roles in each case were played by the same actor in their original productions by Shakespeare's company; Polonius and Caesar by John Heminges and Hamlet and Brutus by [|Richard Burbage].[|[12]] Apart from the dramatic linking of the character of Hamlet with the murderer Brutus (and Hamlet as a murderer of Polonius in particular, as will occur in 3.4), the audience's awareness of the //actors'// identities and previous roles is being triggered.

[]

Last night, one of MacIvor's one-man shows, entitled //Here Lies Henry// began a limited return engagment, and it's a shame. It's an absolute shame that we may never see MacIvor portray these characters again. //Here Lies Henry// deals with Henry, a self-confessed liar. He rambles on, awkward at times, about the meaning of life, and the pointlessness of it all. He tries to tell us something we don't already know, but because he is a liar, it's hard to distinguish what is truth and what is a lie. MacIvor is absolutely in his element on the stage, sharing a story that is tragic, funny and deeply moving all at the same time. His script is quick, sharp, and most of all, supremely elegant and blunt. He achieves moments of complete brilliance, captivating his audience for the full 75 minutes of the piece.

Read more at Suite101: [|Here Lies Henry - Review: Homage Is Being Paid To Daniel MacIvor and da da Kamera This Season At Buddies] []


 * // History of da da kamera ://**

Company in Toronto, [|Ontario], devoted to new work. It was founded in 1986 by [|Daniel MacIvor] and is now managed by MacIvor,[|Daniel Brooks] and Sherrie Johnson. The company's name was originally a pseudonym which allowed MacIvor to produce his own works. Among the companies productions are MacIvor's //Monster//, //Here Lies Henry// and //House// as well as //The Lorca Play//, //The Soldier Dreams// and [|Insomnia] //.// They have toured their works extensively, across the country and abroad (//Monster//, for instance, played Calgary, Dublin, New York, Montreal and Sydney, Australia among other centres). The company focusses on creation, placing no time limits on the process. They search for the "clear and simple connection between performance and audience." To this end, their works have an intense emotional impact and a heightened esthetic sense, with much space given to designers (even as the designs, themselves, remain lucid and deceptively simple).

[]

HERE LIES HENRY The da da kamera play originally from 1996 and again directed by longtime collaborator Daniel Brooks is almost impossible to describe. Reducing it down to its narrative elements won't help your comprehension and might even lessen the power and pleasure of seeing it for the first time. Outward descriptors of the protagonist, Henry -- cosmetics salesman, gay, Canadian, dead -- are such mundane bric-a-brac compared to the urgent needs and passions MacIvor evokes through a bravura display of physical ticks and verbal hiccups.

Nothing is obvious; meaning is found in the tiniest things. Everything else is just posturing, lies. We are all the same, Henry says. We are born; we have some experiences; we die.

You don't believe for one moment that the quivering bumbler who greets you at the opening of the play is anyone but MacIvor himself, the celebrated theatre artist totally in control of his craft. But the character of Henry soon has you under his bitter, guilt-ridden, ever-romantic spell. His merciless insights never miss their mark. A deliciously cynical diatribe on the boredom and petty defeats of connubial bliss, for example, has everyone squirming in their seats. []


 * Research by Lieneke den Otter**

Daniel MacIvor born 23 July 1962 is Sydney NS. He went to Dalhousie and later on to George Brown University. He started the //da da Kamera// theatre company in Toronto in 1987. The theatre closed in 2007. In 2006 his plays //Never Swim Alone//, //The Soldier Dreams//, //You Are Here//, //In on It//, and //A Beautiful View// were published in one volume entitled //I Still Love You//. This won the Governor General’s Award for Drama. His recent projects include writing and directing and co-writing several independent films which have for the most part been filmed in Nova Scotia. These films include //Past Perfect, Marion Bridge, Whole New Thing// and //Wilby Wonderful//. In 1998, MacIvor won the award for overall excellence at the New York International Fringe Festival for his play //Never Swim Alone//. In 2002, his play //In On It// earned him a GLAAD award and a Village Voice Obie Award. In 2008, he was awarded the prestigious Siminovitcvh Prize in Theatre, which is a Canadian theatre award that recognizes Canadians for their work in the areas of design, direction and playwriting in Canada. //Marion Bridge// received its off-Broadway premiere in New York in October of 2005 In 1993, MacIvor was awarded a Genie for his short film //The Fairy Who Didn’t Want to be a Fairy Anymore.// In 2004, he won a Chlotrudis award and Genie award for his screenplay adaptation of his play //Marion Bridge.//
 * Plays**
 * Film**
 * List of works**
 * //See Bob Run// (1989), da da kamera, directed by Ken McDougall
 * //Yes I Am and// Who Are You? (1989), Buddies in Bad Times, directed by Edward Roy
 * //Wild Abandon// (1990), Theatre Passe Muraille, directed by Vinetta Strombergs
 * //Somewhere I Have Never Travelled// (1990), //Tarragon Theatre,// directed by Andy McKim
 * //Never Swim Alone// (1991), da da kamera, directed by Ken McDougall
 * //2-2 Tango// (1991), Buddies in Bad Times, directed by Ken McDougall
 * //Jump// (1992), Theatre Passe Muraille, directed by Daniel Brooks
 * //This is a Play// (1992), da da kamera, directed by Ken MacDougall
 * //The Lorca Play// (1992), da da kamera, co-directed by MacIvor and Daniel Brooks
 * //In On It// (2000), Edinburgh Festival, directed by MacIvor
 * //Cul-de-Sac// (2003), da da Kamera, directed by Daniel Brooks
 * //A Beautiful View// (2006), da da kamera
 * //How It Works// (2007) //Tarragon Theatre//

It's a not-so-terribly flattering portrait of a man who feels that just about everything in his sad little life could be improved by a bit of fiction. What remains obscure, of course, is just what it is that has brought Henry to the theatre that night, beyond the fact that he seems determined to tell us something we didn't already know. Fourth Wall? Gone. Set? A bare stage, marked only by a square of light. Plot? Well, MacIvor demands that his audience make it up as he goes along.
 * Daniel MacIvor opens retrospective **
 * By JOHN COULBOURN - Toronto Sun **

Here is his list of works on IMDB []

And some other site for the University he's working at now. From 1987 to 2007, with producing partner Sherrie Johnson, he ran da da kamera, a respected international theatre touring company that has brought his work to Australia, Israel, Europe, the UK, and extensively throughout Canada and the US. []

Finally Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia. It has some good quotes and information about him, and some great photos. http://www.canadiantheatre.com/dict.pl?term=MacIvor%2C%20Daniel