October 28, 2008

by Suzan Abrams

Caption: Playwright Daniel Maclvor

The Toronto based playwright, Daniel Maclvor who wrote
How It Works and A Beautiful View and who has in the past penned such notable plays as See Bob Run, Wild Abandon, The Soldier Dreams and His Greatness, has won the $100,000 Siminovitch Prize in Theatre.

The prize which is Canada's most lucrative award presents $75,000 to the winning playwright, judged for his contribution and body of work with respect to playwriting.

It places the remaining $25,000 in the hands of the playwright's chosen protege. This time round, Maclvor has settled for a Vancouver based writing team made up of Daniel Arnold and Medina Hahn.

Just two weeks ago, Maclvor had bagged a $25,000 commission to write a new work for the Banff Centre of Arts. He is also juggling four plays in various stages of production.

His newest play, Confession, designed as the first part of a trilogy with Communion and Redemption being the other two plays, opens in Guysborough this week. How It Works is running in Winnipeg and A Beautiful View is being staged in Washington. Meanwhile, Maclvor is also involved in a workshop at Montreal's National Theatre School. Naturally, there's a lot of running about.

Maclvor's plays reflect on the execution of relationships between ordinary people who hold unusual perceptions.

Perhaps his most inspiring remark of late, quoted in CBC (Canada)'s Book Section is when he said, "This is going to make a difference for me in terms of the time that I can take — I'll sleep better and I'll be able to do … the work that's important to me, rather than the work that's important to the rent."

Maclvor also added that while he was busy working on his trilogy of plays with some theatre support, he was looking forward to writing time of his own. He will also leave for Tokyo later on courtesy of an expensive commissioned project, that sees him staying put in Japan for awhile, writing a tragic romance between a conservative Japanese translator and her Canadian boyfriend. Maclvor plans to hire an additional writer and translator for the play.

Here is the list of the rest of the nominees.

Credit: Picture courtesy of CBC (Canada) Books Section.