Justice For Maurice Henry Carter is based on the true story of the enduring friendship between Maurice Carter and Doug Tjapkes. Maurice spent 29 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Doug, a former church organ salesman and radio station owner, befriended Maurice and together they worked tirelessly for ten years to win Maurice’s freedom. Maurice is Black.  Doug is White.  While seeking justice, they became brothers.

Music is an essential element of the play. A gospel choir sings hymns, songs and traditional spirituals which are woven into the narrative line of the play. The choir also acts as a chorus whose members become the community, church congregations and take up the individual voices of the smaller roles.  The chorus/choir can range from a chamber choir of four singers to a mass choir.

Justice for Maurice Henry Carter was part of the Reader’s Theatre of New Works at the National Black Theatre Festival (2013 & 2015).  Staged readings of the play have been held at the Atlanta Black Theatre Festival (2019) for which the Consul General of Canada, Nadia Theodore held a reception; Michigan State University (2015); the Earnest C. Brooks Corrections Facility (2014), under the auspices of Shakespeare Behind Bars; Western Michigan University (2013), Calvin College (2012 & 2013), and as a successful fundraiser for the Hawaii Innocence Project at the University of Hawaii at Manoa (2012). 

Arbez Drama Projects mounted a workshop production of the play with a 15-member gospel choir at the Fringe Festival of Toronto (2010).  Excerpts readings followed by panel discussions have taken place at the 33rd Annual Teaching Public Administration Conference in Grand Rapids (2010) and the Innocence Network Conference in Houston (2009).  

A three-day workshop with a public presentation funded by the Ontario Arts Council and Toronto Arts Council was mounted by Arbez Drama Projects (2008).   And two actors and a singer read a 15-minute excerpt of the play in Toronto at Across the T-Dot, an evening of readings presented by Obsidian Theatre Company as part of their International Playwrights Forum (2008).

AWARDS:

Lark Play Development Center, Playwrights' Week, 2012, Finalist, Justice For Maurice Henry Carter.

The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, National Playwrights Conference, 2009, semi-finalist for Maurice Carter’s Innocence (now titled Justice For Maurice Henry Carter)

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(Le Vieux Loup et La Truite Sacrée)

The Old Wolf and the Sacred Trout is about a wolf that meets a human being for the first time. The play is set in Northern Quebec at a time when the first road pushed into the Canipiscau region at the beginning of the James Bay hydroelectric development projects. The play is about the way an ancient community of wolves becomes transformed when a new god enters the world.

The Old Wolf and the Sacred Trout is a dance play. The characters are animals: wolves, bear and moose. Animals think. They feel. They perceive the world. They communicate with their kinfolk. They communicate with their bodies. Indeed, we must turn to dance to tell this story because our characters speak no human tongue.

A child goes missing shortly after her nanny is fired.  The missing child’s mother confronts the nanny in a park.  Featuring an ethnically diverse cast, the answer to the question “Who’s child is this?” takes on expanded meaning.  In many communities, nannies and live-in-care-givers abound.  Many have left their homes and work in foreign lands. They’re more than an employee but are they really part of the family?  Where do they fit in?  How do we all keep children safe?

PAZ was selected for the Puente Theatre staged reading series WORLDPLAY 2012, in Victoria, BC.  In 2011, PAZ was accepted for a one-on-one session at the Black Theatre Workshop conference “Since Mama Done Got Off the Couch” in Montreal.  It was a finalist in the 2010 and 2011 Doorway Arts Ensemble Play Reading Series in Washington, DC.  Before that, PAZ received a workshop presentation at b current’s rock. paper. sistahz 7 festival in May 2008.  That resulted in an opportunity to rework the script and incorporate feedback provided by a group of Filipina live-in caregivers at a private reading.  Excerpts from PAZ were first read at a Salon Luncheon during the 2006 AfriCanadian Playwrights Festival.

Photo by Donald Molnar.

A woman abandons her elderly mother in the lingerie section of a department store that takes underwear very seriously. When Mama runs amok, Lacey gets ruffled. Lingerie gets sorted. Strangers get personal. D Cup, a comedy in one-act.

D Cup had its first public reading at the Cranbrook Public Library.

The play was selected for the 2017 New Ideas Festival in Toronto.

Denis s’est fait frappé par un coup de foudre. Il est tombé amoureux d’une coiffeuse au centre d'achat à côté de chez Canadian Tire, mais il lui manque le courage de faire quelque chose. Elle est trop belle, trop sympathique, et surtout trop parfaite. C’est vrai. Faut qu’il fasse de quoi parce que sinon il va être chauve bientôt! Ses chums de travail vont venir à son secours plein de bonnes idées pour passer à l’attaque!

En passant, Denis et ses chums de pompiers forestier poignés dans la garage avec rien à faire à cause de la pluie vont régler ensemble tous les problèmes d’amour entre les hommes et les femmes au Québec entier, et tout ça avant même la pause de café! Après tout, l’amour, c’est pas compliqué. 

Les femmes, par exemple, ça c’est d’autr’chose!

Photo de Martin Boisclair.

Sara’s Cave is a Holocaust drama set in eastern Poland during Passover in 1942. While hiding a Jewish family in her root cellar, an Einstazgruppe passes through her village and Anna must billet two German officers who hate each other. As one officer struggles with his conscience, the other tries to push him over the edge.  Lives hang in the balance.

The play has won the Jewish Canadian Playwriting Competition and the Canadian National Playwrighting Competition.  It was a finalist in the Joyce Dutka Arts Foundation’s Playwrighting Awards in New York as well as the Chesterfield Filmwriter’s Project.

Sara' Cave is included in a book about Canadian plays recommended for a contemporary German audience entitled, Jewish Facets of Contemporary Drama, written by Professor Albert Reiner-Glaap.

Photos by Richard Yagutilov.

Yo Canada! is about five roommates who chase their dreams while their dreams are chasing them.

Poster by Dorian Shine.