Animals

Two Plays by Karen Hines, Crawlspace and All The Little Animals I Have Eaten

Karen Hines

• Publisher: Coach House Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781552453421
• eBook ISBN: 9781770564985
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Canadian Drama
• Index: Literature

Inspired by true events, Crawlspace is a darkly comedic tale that moves past "cautionary" as it snakes through the brutal battleground of real estate, decorative twig orbs, and the state of the human soul.
All the Little Animals I Have Eaten explores questions surrounding existence, death and salvation through the perspectives of the ghosts of brilliant authors, vertebrates, and unexpected voices.

ALL THE LITTLE
ANIMALS
I HAVE EATEN

Playwright’s Note

How and where do we live? What did we have to do to get there? Do we have the imagination to be somewhere else?

All the Little Animals I Have Eaten is the third play in what I think of as a ‘shelter trilogy,’ which includes Crawlspace and Drama: Pilot Episode.

The three plays are concerned with precarity; with the desire to transcend one’s circumstances; with the overwhelming yearning for a place to rest, to feel at home. I have looked through dark, comedic lenses as I have written these plays – as I wonder where we are going and how we got here. Dark, but in the end these plays cleave to the light because I think of comedy as a kind of duty … and that real estate is weirdly funny.

All the Little Animals I Have Eaten is for my nieces, Jade, Becky, and Zoë. Also for Laine and Vaughan and for the little nephews, too.

Production History

As this book goes to print, All the Little Animals I Have Eaten has not yet opened, so its production history exists in present and future tense. It will officially premiere nine days after it hits the presses – on January 12, 2017.

The world premiere of All the Little Animals is being presented as part of the High Performance Rodeo, produced by One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theatre in Calgary.

The cast is:

Georgina Beaty as ‘A,’ the Ghost of Sylvia Plath, other characters.

Nadien Chu as ‘B,’ the Ghost of Virginia Woolf, other characters.

Denise Clarke as ‘C,’ the Ghost of Anne Sexton, other characters.

and

Ellen Close as Frankie, the Server.

Direction and Dramaturgy: Blake Brooker

Staging: Denise Clarke

Lighting Design: Sandi Somers

Sound Design: Peter Moller

Costumes: Heather Moore

Technical Director: Geoff Buchanan

Production Stage Manager:Johanne Deleeuw

For One Yellow Rabbit

Artistic Director: Blake Brooker

Managing Director and Managing Producer of the High

Performance Rodeo: Ann Connors

The extraordinary OYR Team (see www.oyr.org)

Acknowledgements

The playwright acknowledges the essential support of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Enbridge Playwriting Award.

She also gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Banff Playwrights Colony (2014 and 2016), a partnership between the Banff Centre and the Canada Council for the Arts. Also, the Citadel Theatre Academy – Playwright Forum, the Alberta Playwrights Network, and the Script Salon Series in Edmonton through Equity in Theatre, and the Playwrights Guild of Canada.

Many thanks to Dr. Lynne Mursin for her generous patronage and inspiration.

Blake Brooker’s theatrical imagination and intelligence have inspired this play from its start. His deft grasp of my proto-thoughts and his stewardship as Director and Dramaturge over the past few years have informed and made real this performance project and the book that is Animals. I stole a few of my favourite lines directly from his lips or pen and I am so grateful.

Playwrights Colleen Murphy and John Murrell, OC, AOE, have been cherished and demanding mentors. Their words are indirectly – and directly – embedded in the text and I am deeply indebted.

One Yellow Rabbit offers generous and, I think, essential time to rehearse its new plays. The company of designers, artists, administrators and technicians OYR assembled for ATLA have safeguarded the final development of the script.

Cheers to the Performing Posse: to Georgina Beaty, Nadien Chu, Denise Clarke, Ellen Close, and Johanne Deleeuw for lending their imaginations and their skills to the final shaping of the script. These artists’ ideas and words are on these pages and I will be eternally grateful to them for their blazing generosity.

A play such as this benefits enormously from readings aloud. My thanks to Soulpepper and to Guillermo Verdecchia for his literary intelligence and for his faith; to Trevor Rueger and the Alberta Playwrights Network for the same, and for the earliest reads; to Elizabeth Swados; to Brian Quirt, Jenna Rodgers, and the Banff Playwrights’ Colony; Colleen Murphy, Brian Dooley, and the Citadel Forum; Script Salon Series, Edmonton. To Iris Turcott and her Factory WIRED. And to all the actors for talking about whatever it is women talk about.

Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Alison Bechdel and Liz Wallace are all quoted directly – from their works, journals, interviews. The poets’ direct quotes are noted on pages 149–50.

Also quoted, perhaps more indirectly, are Kate Lynch, Derek Parfit, Jamie Dunsdon, Susan Sontag, Jennifer Egan, Laurie Penny, Jennifer Kesler, Joe Wenderoth, Marina O’Loughlin, John Cassidy, and the Dark Mountain Project.

All the Little Animals I Have Eaten

The play is performed by four actors, female: different ages, and different from each other.

The characters they play are largely professionals: women who might frequent a high-end bistro, which, in this play, could mean being anything from an insurance adjuster to a dead writer to a ballerina from a music box.

There is nothing in the way of set except a super-contemporary French bistro table and chairs. The tab...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Crawlspace: Inspired by A True Story
• All The Little Animals I Have Eaten
• References