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Gordon
Pengilly
Gordon Pengilly studied at the University of Alberta 1971-78 where he earned a B.A. in Drama and an M.F.A. in Playwriting. A ten-time winner of provincial and national playwriting competitions, Gordon was in university when Hard Hats And Stolen Hearts (co-written with Theatre Network) was produced Off-Off-Broadway.
His many playwriting credits include Swipe, produced by NDWT Co. at Toronto Free Theatre, 1981, Yours Til The Moon Falls Down, produced at Lunchbox Theatre, Calgary, 1992, Metastasis, produced in Edmonton at Northern Light Theatre, 1995, at the Montreal Fringe Festival, 1998, and in Calgary by the Company of Rogues, 1999, and Seeds which has been produced many times nationwide and in Holland. They Don't Call Them Farmers Anymore and Wildcat! have both toured Alberta and have aired on TV and radio. His play Drumheller Or Dangerous Times was staged by Prime Stock Theatre Company in Red Deer, 2001, and Contraption in Edmonton by Jagged Edge Theatre, 2002.
Gordon was playwright-in-residence at Theatre Calgary 1984-85 where his Alice On Stage was performed. Since living in Calgary, he has gained recognition for his radio plays. In 1989, CBC selected The Ballad Of An Existential Cowboy as one of its Best-of-Decade for radio drama. His radio play, In The Middle Of Town Stands The Dreamland, was nominated for a Peabody Award in 1993 and was broadcast in Australia. His mystery series Bailey's Way was a success in 1998-99.
Gordon has written three screenplays including adaptations of Drumheller Or Dangerous Times and Metastasis funded for development by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and Telefilm Canada respectively. Drumheller Or Dangerous Times won the 2003 Writers Guild of Canada Jim Burt Prize for Screenwriting and the Alberta Television and Film Institute Award in the Feature/MOW Screenwriting Category. A short film adapted from his play The Work Play which premiered at the Actor's Loft in New York, and recently in Japan, has recently been made in Los Angeles.
Selected plays
In alphabetical order by title:
They Don't Call Them Farmers Anymore
Wildcat! (with The Ballad of Pappy Wells)
Yours 'Til the Moon Falls Down
To request a copy of any of these plays please contact the playwright directly via email.
To inquire about performance rights for any of these plays please contact the playwright directly via email.
by Gordon Pengilly
Style: Drama/Comedy
Number of Acts: Two acts
Length: 100 mins
Total actors required: 20
Men: 10
Women: 10
Synopsis:
A rousing adapation of Alice In Wonderland. Includes scenes from Alice Through
the Looking Glass too.
Production History:
Theatre Calgary, 1985.
Directed by John Palmer.
Notes:
Original music by Jan Randall.
by Gordon Pengilly
Style: Drama/Comedy
Number of Acts: One act
Length: 60 mins
Total actors required: 5
Men: 3
Women: 2
Synopsis:
Losing life-long employment at Canadian Tire leads to depression and delusion
for a middle-aged man - with both comic and dark repercussions for his already
dysfunctional family. Paul Merriman starts hearing voices in the walls and
proceeds to build an old-fashioned outhouse in the middle of the living room.
Production History:
Jagged Edge Theatre, Edmonton, 2002.
Directed by Amy DeFelice.
by Gordon Pengilly
Style: Drama
Number of Acts: Two acts
Length: 90 mins
Total actors required: 6
Men: 3
Women: 3
Synopsis:
1924. John Gallagher's coal mine at Carbon on the edge of the Drumheller badlands
is going bust. He also owes his lawyer a lot of money going back to his murder
trial three years ago. His girlfriend, Hannah Bruce, a parttime bootlegger
and owner of a local bed-and-breakfast, is begging him to flee the valley
with her because the pals of anti-union boss he allegedly killed are out
for revenge. Their relationship is, in turns, as solid as bedrock and as
fragile as the crust.
When Gallagher finds a dinosaur skeleton in his mineshaft things start looking better for a few moments; maybe he can sell it somewhere. He makes contact with a paleontologist from the university in Edmonton named Bloomfield who he quickly learns is nearly as desperate for money as he is. The paleontologist, though, won't go away. He wants Gallagher's dinosaur bone, and he might have his eyes on Gallagher's girlfriend, too. He's charming and smart and ambitious. Enter two strangers with a bag full of stolen money and the plot thickens.
It's a tale of menace, madness and passion. Themes of investigation and excavation function throughout, along with a spectacular landscape and a compelling historical backdrop.
Production History:
Prime Stock Theatre Co., Red Deer, 2001.
Directed by Tomas Usher.
Notes:
Drumheller Or Dangerous Times has been adapted into a screenplay by the author, winning the 2003 WGC Jim Burt Prize for screenwriting.
by Gordon Pengilly
Style: Drama/Comedy
Number of Acts: Two acts
Length: 90 mins
Total actors required: 8 minimum & 1 musician
Men: 5
Women: 3 & 1 musician
Synopsis:
Named for the pathological spread of live rot through a system, Metastasis sets twenty-five characters into motion rippling out from a random drive-by
shooting to conjure a world of missed connections and crossed wires where
people come and go, couple and uncouple, take potshots at each other and
save their secrets and hunger for strangers. It's a bleakly funny vision
of human separateness in a baffling landscape which tells the audience to
look to malignancy and the way it grows fruitful and multiplies to see how
we are bonded together.
The story radiates out from two central families, one headed by a surgeon who was shot at while driving home from tryst with a nurse and the other by the patient he abandons on the operating table out of his own emotion disintegration.
The daisy-chain of consequences suggests that random violence isn't random at all and casual sex is anything but casual. Spiritual growth the hard way: that's what Metastasis is on about.
Production History:
Northern Light Theatre, Edmonton,
1995.
Direced by DD Kugler.
Notes:
Metastasis has been adapted by the author to radio and film.
by Gordeon Pengilly
Style: Drama
Number of Acts: One act
Length: 50 mins
Total actors required: 2
Men: 1
Women: 1
Synopsis:
1950. A farmer and his wife recount the arrival and subsequent disappearance
twenty years earlier of a mysterious hired-hand who had become Isa's one-night
lover and Pat's imagined son in the course of a single growing season.
The play is comprised of poetic parallel monlogues.
Production History:
University of Alberta, 1977.
Directed by Keith Digby.
Notes:
Winner of several awards for playwriting and production.
The play was performed on radio and TV as well.
by Gordon Pengilly
Style: Drama/Comedy
Number of Acts: Two acts
Length: 90 mins
Total actors required: 6
Men: 4
Women: 2
Synopsis:
Set in a lagoon where an old paddlewheel steamer, "Empress", sits
wrecked, the play spins the tale of the 15-year-old Rooster's apprenticeship
to become a master-thief. Under the tutelage and leadership of Peck Woodstick,
Rooster and the other tramps of the lagoon await the return of Clancy Dougal,
their infamous, old leader, who according to Peck went to the moon, promising
to return one day with revelation and inspired blueprints.
Peck has managed to deliver the hope of transcendence to his crew and a postion of power for himself, including a healthy share of the crew's collective loot. The crew has become increasingly impatient for transcendence, and suspicious thereof, and things become even more complicated with the arrival of Becky, a runaway, to the lagoon, for whom Rooster falls head-over-heels. Peck attempts to use Becky in his own ideological gamesmanship, fails, and the world as they all know it flies apart at the seams.
Production History:
Walterdale Theatre, Edmonton, 1981.
Directed by Larry Farley.
Notes:
Winner of the Walterdale Theatre 75th Anniversary Award.
They Don't Call Them Farmers Anymore
by Gordon Pengilly
Style: Drama
Number of Acts: One act
Length: 60 mins
Total actors required: 6 & 1 musician
Men: 4
Women: 3
Synopsis:
A presentational style of play which chronicles the demise of the family
farm across the prairies, focusing on one particular family.
The play includes parallel monologues, dialogue, and poetry.
Production History:
Alberta Repertoire Theatre, Lethbridge (and tour), 1993.
Notes:
Based on the long suite of poems by the author, published in The Road Home by Reidmore Books, Edmonton, ed. Fred Stenson.
Wildcat! (with The Ballad of Pappy Wells)
by Gordon Pengilly
Style: Drama/Comedy
Number of Acts: Two acts
Length: 90 mins
Total actors required: 3 & 1 musician
Men: 4
Women: 0
Synopsis:
A presentational style of play with several original songs about the early
years of the wildcat oil industry of Alberta. Many true stories of adventure,
humour and astonishment.
Production History:
Prime Stock Theatre Co., Red Deer and toured in 2000. Directed by Tomas Usher.
Notes:
Winner of the Multimedia Award for 2000 by the Petroleum History Society of Alberta.
by Gordon Pengilly
Style: Drama/Comedy
Number of Acts: One act
Length: 15 mins
Total actors required: 2
Men: 2
Women: 0
Synopsis:
Out-of-work Charles goes to a job interview in an abandoned warehouse to find
out that he's the only applicant and the job is more than mysterious. The
man who interviews Charles seems to know everything about him, including
the insanity that runs through his family.
Production History:
The Actor's Loft, New York, 2002.
Directed by Stan Klimecko.
Notes:
The Work Play has recently been made into a short film in Los Angeles and is entered in the Sundance Film Festival.
Yours 'Til the Moon Falls Down
by Gordon Pengilly
Style: Comedy
Number of Acts: One act
Length: 55 mins
Total actors required: 2 & 1 musician
Men: 2
Women: 1
Synopsis:
A romantic comedy set during the inaugural Calgary Stampede of 1912 where two
young misfits fall in love during that spectacular, topsy-turvy week but
don't have the courage or confidence to approach each other without pretending
to be someone else -- Nellie, a Parisian showgirl -- and Andrew, of course,
a cowboy. They finally win each other's hearts with the help of an old street
musician.
Production History:
Lunchbox Theatre, Calgary, 1992, directed by Tom Kerr.
Notes:
Original music by Tim Williams.