Alien Creature
The Other Theatre presents…
Alien Creature:
A Visitation From Gwendolyn MacEwen
By Linda Griffiths
I didn’t commit suicide. I drank myself to death. It’s different.
Don’t Sylvia Plath me and I won’t Sylvia Plath you.
Seminal Canadian poet Gwendolyn MacEwen was found dead in her basement apartment on November 29, 1987. Her body was discovered clutching a telephone, the shape of the receiver imprinted on her stomach. Her death was attributed to health complications related to alcoholism. She was 46 years old.
In her short lifetime, MacEwen authored 26 books, won two Governor General’s awards, married and divorced Milton Acorn, and hung with a budding Margaret Atwood. And she loved — really, loved — Wonder Woman. Now, through turns poetic and dark, tinged with comic-book fantasy, Gwendolyn’s ghost emerges from the shadows to share the story of her fate: how she began as a young, luminous writer published at 17, how she survived as a poet in the Canadian literary explosion that began in the ’60s, and how the economy of the following decades eventually pushed her into basement-hovel obscurity and vodka-soaked oblivion.
The Other Theatre and Azimuth Theatre proudly present Laurissa Kalinowski as Gwendolyn MacEwen, co-directed by Laura Raboud and Fawnda Mithrush.Alien Creature runs September 18th through October 4th at the Azimuth Theatre’s Living Room Playhouse (11315-106 Ave.). Shows are Thu-Sat nightly at 8 pm, with Sunday matinees on September 21 & 28 at 2 pm. All tickets are Pay-What-You-Can.
For interviews, media inquiries, or production information, please contact The Other Theatre at info@theothertheatre.ca or call Fawnda Mithrush at 780-995-8339.
Poetry has nothing to do with poetry.
Poetry is how the air goes green before thunder
is the sound you make when you come and
why you live and how you bleed
and the sound you make or don’t make when you die.
