Pan Canadian New Translation Workshop in Isolation
HAVEN
By Mishka Lavigne | Translated by Neil Blackadder
Translated from Havre (Francophone Canada)
The workshop included Mishka Lavigne (Ottawa), Neil Blackadder (Chicago), Johanna Nutter (Montreal), Art Kitching & Jack Paterson (Vancouver)
Elsie has just lost her mother, and Matt, is searching for his past. They’re brought together by the hole that opened up in the asphalt and the contents of the car that fell to the bottom. Haven is a play about loss, about absence, about emptiness. But it’s also a play about overflow, about too many memories and too many regrets. Haven speaks of friendships of necessity. Of the people we meet when we need them the most; those we meet when everything around us crumbles. Haven in the storm.
Recipient of the Governor General’s Award for Drama French Language (2019).
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT
Mishka Lavigne
Mishka Lavigne is a playwright and literary translator based in Ottawa/Gatineau. Her translation work for theatre has been seen in Ottawa, Montreal, and France. Héritage, her translation of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun opened the 2019-2020 season at Duceppe in Montreal. She is currently working on a French translation of Karen Hines’ All The Little Animals I Have Eaten. Her translations of poetry were published in Ontario and Québec, included the recently published Cette blessure est un territoire, a French translation of Billy-Ray Belcourt’s Griffin Poetry Prize winning collection This Wound is a World. Her own works include Cinéma (Théâtre la Catapulte and Théâtre Belvédère.), Vigile (Théâtre Rouge Écarlate). Her play Havre recently won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama (French) and was shortlisted for the Prix Michel-Tremblay.
