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Eugene
Stickland
Eugene Stickland is the award-winning author of several frequently produced plays, most notably Some Assembly Required and A Guide to Morning, which were written during a decade long residency with Alberta Theatre Projects in Calgary. During this time, Eugene looked after the educational programming at ATP, including the Student Writers Group and the Theatreblitz! Festival, and was the Canadian delegate to the World Interplay Fetival for young playwrights in Australia. Eugene writes a feature column for the Calgary Herald. Current projects include writing a full-length version of his play, Closer and Closer Apart which will open at Theatre Network in Edmonton in the 2006-07 season, and a new play, Writer's Block for Calgary's Ground Zero Theatre. It's an out and out unabashed comedy. Eugene lives in Calgary with his daughter Hanna. He is currently APN's President.
Selected plays
In alphabetical order by title:
Seven Pairs of Boots (Radio Play)
To request a copy of any of these plays please contact the playwright directly via e-mail.
To inquire about performance rights for any of these plays please contact the playwright directly via e-mail.
by Eugene Stickland
Style: Comedy/Drama
Number of acts: Two acts
Length: 100 mins
Total actors required: 6
Men: 4
Women: 2
Synopsis:
The play is an episode in the lives of the Pringle family. Walter Pringle, family patriarch, has died. Wife Deirdre and children Rex, Lewis and Sandra gather to plan the funeral - a difficult task for even the closest and most organized of families; for the Pringles, it's pure chaos.
Production History:
First produced by Alberta Theatre Projects at PanCanadian playRites, Calgary, 1998.
Subsequent productions include the Belfry Theatre, Victoria, 1998; ATP Main stage, Calgary, 2000; Theatre Network, Edmonton; Globe Theatre, Regina; Theatre North West, Prince George; Sudbury Theatre Centre, Great Canadian Theatre Company, Ottawa, and others.
by Eugene Stickland
Style: Drama
Number of acts:
Length: 90 mins
Total actors required: 5
Men: 3
Women: 2
Synopsis:
All Clear is the story of a suburban family trapped in their home some weeks or months after a terrible disaster. The doors and windows are duct-taped shut and covered with plastic sheeting, all they have for light are flashlights and trouble lamps and all they can see through their plastic sheeted windows are clouds of sickly orange smog. Time drags and their nerves fray as they wait for word from outside, for the "all clear" announcement that will allow them to see what is left of the world.
Production History:
First produced by Alberta Theatre Projects at PanCanadian playRites, Calgary, 2004.
Subsequent production, Theatre Network, Edmonton, 2004.
by Eugene Stickland
Style: Drama/Comedy
Number of acts: Two acts
Length: 100 mins
Total actors required: 4
Men: 2
Women: 2
Synopsis:
Sam and Alice accept an invitation to dinner… but who, exactly, are their hosts? Victor and Tanya seem welcoming enough, but as the evening progresses events start to take an hilariously sinister turn…
Production History:
First produced by Alberta Theatre Projects at PanCanadian playRites, Calgary, 2000.
by Eugene Stickland
Style: Drama
Number of acts: One act
Length: 50
Total actors required: 2
Men: 1
Women: 1
Synopsis:
Melanie comes home to visit her elderly but still active father, Joe, only to discover that he is exhibiting increasingly forgetful behavior. A taught and poignant exploration of Alzheimer’s in one act.
Production History:
First produced by Lunchbox Theatre, Calgary, 1999.
by Eugene Stickland
Style: Experimental
Number of acts: One act
Length: 80 mins
Total actors required: 5
Men: 1
Women: 4
Synopsis:
A poetic play set on the Canadian prairie, four characters try to make sense of their lives on the anniversary of the death of a close friend, who appears in a series of flashbacks. The play was written to include an improvised cello accompaniment
Production History:
Thesis play for MFA at York University.
Produced at Adelaide Court Theatre in Toronto in the spring of 1984, and remounted by the ACT IV Theatre Co. in Toronto, 1985.
By Eugene Stickland
Style: Experimental
Number of acts: Two
Length: 90 mins
Total actors required: 4
Men: 3
Women: 1
Synopsis:
A paleontologist arrives in rural Saskatchewan to excavate a T Rex. He is confronted and confounded by the local populace, including the eccentric land-owner who believes one quarter of the world's populations needs to be eradicated; as well as an alcoholic. de-frocked fundamentalist minister and his sister.
Production History:
Premiered by Theatre Network, Edmonton, 2002.
by Eugene Stickland
Style: Comedy
Number of acts: Two
Length: 90 mins
Total actors required: 3
Men: 2
Women: 1
Synopsis:
A love triangle in the offices of a large oil company. The situation takes a turn for the worse when Jack Palmer, an oil executive, hooks up with a much younger woman, Amber. Meanwhile, one of Jack's employees, Delvechio, waits in the wings. In the end, Jack loses the girl and his job, but is miraculously bailed out from a most unlikeley source.
Production History:
Premiered by Alberta Theatre Projects at PanCanadian playRites, Calgary, 1992.
Subsequent productions at Gateway Theatre, Richmond; Theatre Network, Edmonton; Festival Antigonish, Nova Scotia.
by Eugene Stickland
Style: Drama
Number of acts: Four acts
Length: 70 mins
Total actors required: 4 + 2 Musicians
Men: 4
Women: 2
Synopsis:
Four short plays examining the nature of communication.
Production History:
First produced by ACT IV Theatre Co. at the Adelaide Court Theatre, Toronto, 1986.
Remounted by Froth Theatre at the back space of Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto, 1998.
by Eugene Stickland
Style: Radio drama
Number of acts: One act
Length:20 mins
Total actors required: 1 + 1 pianist.
Men: 1
Women: 0
Synopsis:
Fifteen minutes in Beethoven's life, leading up to a single journal entry.
Production History:
One production on radio, circa 1990.
by Eugene Stickland
Style: Comedy
Number of acts: Two acts
Length:
Total actors required: 5
Men: 3
Women: 2
Synopsis:
A wealthy businessman is convinced by his new-age guru to develop his pristine parcel of land into a new-age housing project. To set the wheels in motion, he advertises his wife’s favourite couch in the Bargain Finder. When a 7-11 night clerk and his tree-hugger girlfriend show up to buy the couch, each character is forced to examine his or her spiritual and material beliefs.
Production History:
First produced by Alberta Theatre Projects at PanCanadian PlayRites, Calgary, 1996.
Subesquent production Arts Club Theatre, Vancouver; Theatre and Company, Kitchener; Persephone Theatre, Saskatoon; Theatre ID , New York.
by Eugene Stickland
Style: Comedy/Drama
Number of acts: Two acts
Length:
Total actors required: 5
Men: 3
Women: 2
Synopsis:
Mom and Dad aren't going to have Christmas this year -- or so they think. When their three grown-up children unexpectedly return home Christmas Eve -- and hide out down in the basement with the barbed-wire, Barbies & BB gun -- it seems that Christmas might just happen after all.
Production History:
First produced by Alberta Theatre Projects at PanCanadian PlayRites, Calgary, 1994.
The play has had close to thirty productions, large and small.
Some noteable ones include:
Remount at ATP for 15th Anniversary season, Northern Light Theatre, Edmonton; Sudbury Theatre Centre, Arts Club Theatre Vancouver; Globe Theatre, Regina; Thousand Islands Playhouse Gananoque, Quebec; Amateur Comedy Club, New York; and in French, translated as Noel de force by Rene Gingras, at Compaign Jean Duceppe at Place des Arts, Montreal.
by Eugene Stickland
Style: Comedy
Number of acts: One act
Length:
Total actors required: 4
Men: 2
Women: 2
Synopsis:
Sory Devine and his wife prepare for the return of their son from a peace-keeping mission in Cyprus. They are joined by the son's fiance and best friend, who have been having a feeble affair. The son comes home in a pine box, however.
Production History:
Produced by ACT IV Theatre Company in Toronto at the back space of Theatre Passe Muraille, 1984. Subsequently produced by Act IV at the Adelaide Court Theatre in Toronto, 1985.
by Eugene Stickland
Style: Comedy
Number of acts: One act
Length: 50 mins
Total actors required: 2
Men: 1
Women: 1
Synopsis:
After a long absence, Sonny Boy returns unannounced to his mother's remote home, the Old Lady's house in the woods. When Sonny is consigned to an abandoned hen house to smoke (having defiled his mother's prize-winning geraniums with butts), we're drawn into a metaphor of self-imposed exile that sees a mother and son as virtual strangers. Sonny Boy packs up his nicotine habit and moves in permanently with the ghosts of chickens past.
Production History:
First produced by Lunchbox Theatre, Calgary, 1998.
by Eugene Stickland
Style: Comedy
Number of acts: One act
Length: 50
Total actors required: 2
Men: 1
Women: 1
Synopsis:
Desmond is an artist and a pack rat who, despite the inclinations of his wife Trish, fills their home with stuff – some useful, but for the most part junk.
Trish arrives home from work one day determined to get Desmond to reduce this accumulation of junk with a yard sale. What begins as a mild disagreement escalates as they empty their storage room.
Production History:
First produced by Lunchbox Theatre, Calgary, 2003.