Three Plays by Maureen Hunter by Maureen Hunter

Three Plays by Maureen Hunter by Maureen Hunter

The three outstanding plays in this collection include Footprints on the Moon (finalist for the Governor General's Award and winner of the Labatt Award for Best Canadian Play) which tells the story of a woman's attempt to prevent her teenage daughter from leaving home and escalates into a struggle to understand the loves and losses that have shaped her life; Beautiful Lake Winnipeg, a riveting tongue-in-cheek tale about adults who play dangerous games as a young man accompanies his fianc?e to her lakeside cabin only to find her ex-husband waiting for them; and lastly, Transit of Venus, which is set in France at a time when society was rapidly expanding its knowledge of the earth and the cosmos. This powerful drama about an ambitious astronomer and the women who love him examines the conflicting needs of men and women.

One of Canada's most accomplished playwrights is Maureen Hunter. Her work has been seen on major stages across Canada, as well as in the United Kingdom and the United States. Two Governor General's Awards, two Dora Mavor Moore Awards (Best New Play), and the Elinor and Lou Siminovitch Prize in Theatre have all been nominated. Atlantis, which had its English premiere at Manitoba Theatre Centre/Theatre Calgary in 1996 and its French premiere at Theatre de la Manufacture, Montreal, in 1999, and Transit of Venus, which had its Canadian premiere at MTC in 1992 and became the first Canadian play ever presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company of London in 1993, are two of her pieces. It was given a U.S. passport.

The Bershire Festival in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, hosted the world premiere in 1998. Vinci, Footprints on the Moon, Lovely Lake Winnipeg, and I Met a Bully on the Hill (co-written with Martha Brooks) are among his other works. Maureen presently resides in Winnipeg, where she is working on a new play, Wild Mouth, set in 1917 in Saskatchewan, as well as a libretto for Manitoba Opera's Transit of Venus.