Judith Thompson
Encyclopedia
Judith Clare Thompson, OC
(born September 20, 1954) is a Canadian
playwright
who lives in Toronto
, Ontario. Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail
once declared that "...in this country, a playwright as good as Judith Thompson is a miracle." She has twice been awarded the Governor General's Award
for drama, and is the recipient of many other awards including the Order of Canada.
, Quebec
, the daughter of W. R. Thompson, a geneticist and the head of the Department of Psychology at Queen's University
, and Mary, who taught in the Queens Drama Department for many years. She is also the sister of Bill Thompson
, a Professor
of Psychology
who composed the music for a number of Judith's radio and stage plays. Thompson was born in Montreal and raised in Middletown, Connecticut
and then Kingston, Ontario
. She studied drama at Queen's and then studied acting at the National Theatre School of Canada
(NTS) in Montreal. Thompson worked as an actor for a year, but then gave it up to pursue writing.
, Thompson had developed the character Theresa, a mildly mentally-handicapped Aboriginal woman based on people she had met while working as an assistant social worker during the summers in Kingston, Ontario
. This character was to provide the core of Thompson's first play The Crackwalker (1980), which focuses on Kingston's sub-proletariat class. It is one of the most tragic plays in Canadian theatre. In 1991, CBC reviewer, Jerry Wasserman called the Vancouver Fringe Festival
production, The Diamond among the pebbles ... Maybe the most powerful play ever written in Canada about two down and out couples in Kingston Ontario living on the edge, the outer edge of respectability and trying to make some sense of their lives - to find love and a kind of domestic normality under the worst conceivable conditions. It's a very, very disturbing play and I think a deeply tragic play about the lowest depths one can imagine in a Canadian city. About a Vancouver production at The Firehall Arts Centre in 1993, The Vancouver Sun
's Barbara Crook wrote The Crackwalker is not theatre for the timid. Judith Thompson’s first play is a graphic, harrowing glimpse at life on the edge, at individuals battered by poverty, ignorance and hopelessness. It is also a brilliant piece of stagecraft that makes use of every well-chosen word and powerfully dramatic moment to force audience members to confront their own darker sides. If you're looking for theatre that takes you to the edge of hell, The Crackwalker fits the bill. The Georgia Straight
's, Colin Thomas wrote, Playwright Thompson also manipulates our relationship to the material by letting us laugh. A lot. .. Actress Jennifer Fahrni's Theresa is an exquisite piece of work, so authentic you can almost smell the lard in her diet, so innocent, she feels like a fairy who grew up in the wrong neighbourhood. The great thing about this performance is that you can't see the craft - the timing, the psychological understanding that makes it all work. As Sandy, Nancy Sivak reconciles the apparent contradictions in a character who attacks her boyfriend with stiletto heels but who is afraid to sleep alone. We all know the paradox of survival skills that keep us isolated and Sivak reflects those back to us.
Thompson's second play, White Biting Dog (1984), was an expressionistic and poetic black comedy about an eccentric and wildly self-destructive family. I Am Yours (1987), while containing similarly expressionistic elements, attaches these to the fears and fantasies of the central characters, to create an even more powerfully compelling theatrical experience.
Lion in the Streets (1990), one of her strongest plays, uses a structure similar to Arthur Schnitzler
's La Ronde
to follow violent and cruel impulses from one character to another, a route which the ghost of a young murdered girl, Isobel, uses to track down her killer. A penultimate scene which Thompson cut after the first workshop production of the play, was restored for the 1999 Theatre Kingston
production, and Thompson has since then included the scene in published editions of the play as one of two alternative versions. Productions of the play have been held in a wide variety of North American locations, including: Toronto, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Portland and Vancouver, but also Łódź, Poland.
Sled (1997), which began life as a seven-hour play called The Last Things, but was later cut down to three hours, attempts again to pursue human violence back to its sources. Thompson first wrote Perfect Pie
as a short monologue for television in 1993, but in 2000 expanded the story into full-length play about two teenaged girls whose lives diverge dramatically after a violent incident. In 2002, Perfect Pie was also made into a feature film of that name, which, while satisfying in itself, offered a more conventional version of the uncanny story told in Thompson's play. Habitat, which premiered in 2001 at CanStage, the major regional theatre in Toronto, shows how a middle-class community is torn apart into factions when a group home for troubled youth is established on a quiet residential street. Capture Me, which premiered in early 2004 at the Tarragon Theatre
in Toronto, is centred on a kindergarten teacher who, while searching for her birth mother, is stalked by her violent ex-husband.
In 1991, she adapted and directed Henrik Ibsen
's Hedda Gabler
for the Shaw Festival
. A remount of Thompson's adaptation appeared at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in 2005. Her adaptation was also performed at the Mainline Theatre in Montreal
in February 2008. Her translation of Serge Boucher's Motel Hélène appeared at the Tarragon Theatre in 2001.
Thompson's work embraces visceral and subconscious elements of human experience which are seldom seen on stage. While the ambitiousness of her scope can occasionally result in plays which seem somewhat unwieldy in their form, she has an astonishing gift for providing theatrical experiences which incisively reach the deepest recesses of her audience's imaginations.
She is currently a professor at the University of Guelph
, where she teaches acting and playwriting courses.
for Drama, in 1985 for her play, White Biting Dog; and in 1989 for a collection of her plays, The Other Side of the Dark. She has won a Toronto Arts Award and the Canadian Authors Association Award. She is the recipient of several Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Awards, including one in 1987 for I Am Yours, and in 1991 for Lion in the Streets. Tornado won an award for Best Radio Drama in 1988. Thompson has received several Dora Mavor Moore Awards from the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts. In 2005, she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada
, and in 2007 she was awarded the Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts by the Canada Council for the Arts. In 2008 she became the first Canadian to be awarded Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
, which recognizes outstanding women playwrights each year.
Order of Canada
The Order of Canada is a Canadian national order, admission into which is, within the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, the second highest honour for merit...
(born September 20, 1954) is a Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
who lives in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, Ontario. Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...
once declared that "...in this country, a playwright as good as Judith Thompson is a miracle." She has twice been awarded the Governor General's Award
Governor General's Award
The Governor General's Awards are a collection of awards presented by the Governor General of Canada, marking distinction in a number of academic, artistic and social fields. The first was conceived in 1937 by Lord Tweedsmuir, a prolific author of fiction and non-fiction who created the Governor...
for drama, and is the recipient of many other awards including the Order of Canada.
Early years
Thompson was born in MontrealMontreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
, Quebec
Quebec
Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....
, the daughter of W. R. Thompson, a geneticist and the head of the Department of Psychology at Queen's University
Queen's University
Queen's University, , is a public research university located in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Founded on 16 October 1841, the university pre-dates the founding of Canada by 26 years. Queen's holds more more than of land throughout Ontario as well as Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex, England...
, and Mary, who taught in the Queens Drama Department for many years. She is also the sister of Bill Thompson
William Forde Thompson
William Forde "Bill" Thompson is a Professor of Psychology at Macquarie University, where he conducts research on music, emotion, and performance. He is Director of the .From 2007 to 2009, he was President of the...
, a Professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
of Psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
who composed the music for a number of Judith's radio and stage plays. Thompson was born in Montreal and raised in Middletown, Connecticut
Middletown, Connecticut
Middletown is a city located in Middlesex County, Connecticut, along the Connecticut River, in the central part of the state, 16 miles south of Hartford. In 1650, it was incorporated as a town under its original Indian name, Mattabeseck. It received its present name in 1653. In 1784, the central...
and then Kingston, Ontario
Kingston, Ontario
Kingston, Ontario is a Canadian city located in Eastern Ontario where the St. Lawrence River flows out of Lake Ontario. Originally a First Nations settlement called "Katarowki," , growing European exploration in the 17th Century made it an important trading post...
. She studied drama at Queen's and then studied acting at the National Theatre School of Canada
National Theatre School of Canada
The National Theatre School of Canada is a private college located in Montreal, Quebec.Established in Montreal in 1960, the National Theatre School of Canada offers professional training in English and French in a setting that unites all the theatre arts: acting, playwriting, directing, set and...
(NTS) in Montreal. Thompson worked as an actor for a year, but then gave it up to pursue writing.
Career as a playwright
While in a mask class at NTSNational Theatre School of Canada
The National Theatre School of Canada is a private college located in Montreal, Quebec.Established in Montreal in 1960, the National Theatre School of Canada offers professional training in English and French in a setting that unites all the theatre arts: acting, playwriting, directing, set and...
, Thompson had developed the character Theresa, a mildly mentally-handicapped Aboriginal woman based on people she had met while working as an assistant social worker during the summers in Kingston, Ontario
Kingston, Ontario
Kingston, Ontario is a Canadian city located in Eastern Ontario where the St. Lawrence River flows out of Lake Ontario. Originally a First Nations settlement called "Katarowki," , growing European exploration in the 17th Century made it an important trading post...
. This character was to provide the core of Thompson's first play The Crackwalker (1980), which focuses on Kingston's sub-proletariat class. It is one of the most tragic plays in Canadian theatre. In 1991, CBC reviewer, Jerry Wasserman called the Vancouver Fringe Festival
Vancouver Fringe Festival
The Vancouver Fringe Festival is an annual alternative theatre festival held in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada established in 1985. This event is organized and sponsored by the First Vancouver Theatrespace Society, a volunteer not-for-profit society...
production, The Diamond among the pebbles ... Maybe the most powerful play ever written in Canada about two down and out couples in Kingston Ontario living on the edge, the outer edge of respectability and trying to make some sense of their lives - to find love and a kind of domestic normality under the worst conceivable conditions. It's a very, very disturbing play and I think a deeply tragic play about the lowest depths one can imagine in a Canadian city. About a Vancouver production at The Firehall Arts Centre in 1993, The Vancouver Sun
The Vancouver Sun
The Vancouver Sun is a daily newspaper first published in the Canadian province of British Columbia on February 12, 1912. The paper is currently published by the Pacific Newspaper Group, a division of Postmedia Network. It is published six days a week, Monday to Saturday...
's Barbara Crook wrote The Crackwalker is not theatre for the timid. Judith Thompson’s first play is a graphic, harrowing glimpse at life on the edge, at individuals battered by poverty, ignorance and hopelessness. It is also a brilliant piece of stagecraft that makes use of every well-chosen word and powerfully dramatic moment to force audience members to confront their own darker sides. If you're looking for theatre that takes you to the edge of hell, The Crackwalker fits the bill. The Georgia Straight
The Georgia Straight
The Georgia Straight is a free Canadian weekly news and entertainment newspaper published in Vancouver, British Columbia, by the Vancouver Free Press Publishing Corp...
's, Colin Thomas wrote, Playwright Thompson also manipulates our relationship to the material by letting us laugh. A lot. .. Actress Jennifer Fahrni's Theresa is an exquisite piece of work, so authentic you can almost smell the lard in her diet, so innocent, she feels like a fairy who grew up in the wrong neighbourhood. The great thing about this performance is that you can't see the craft - the timing, the psychological understanding that makes it all work. As Sandy, Nancy Sivak reconciles the apparent contradictions in a character who attacks her boyfriend with stiletto heels but who is afraid to sleep alone. We all know the paradox of survival skills that keep us isolated and Sivak reflects those back to us.
Thompson's second play, White Biting Dog (1984), was an expressionistic and poetic black comedy about an eccentric and wildly self-destructive family. I Am Yours (1987), while containing similarly expressionistic elements, attaches these to the fears and fantasies of the central characters, to create an even more powerfully compelling theatrical experience.
Lion in the Streets (1990), one of her strongest plays, uses a structure similar to Arthur Schnitzler
Arthur Schnitzler
Dr. Arthur Schnitzler was an Austrian author and dramatist.- Biography :Arthur Schnitzler, son of a prominent Hungarian-Jewish laryngologist Johann Schnitzler and Luise Markbreiter , was born in Praterstraße 16, Leopoldstadt, Vienna, in the Austro-Hungarian...
's La Ronde
La Ronde (play)
La Ronde is a 1900 play by Arthur Schnitzler. It scrutinizes the sexual morals and class ideology of its day through a series of encounters between pairs of characters . By choosing characters across all levels of society, the play offers social commentary on how sexual contact transgresses...
to follow violent and cruel impulses from one character to another, a route which the ghost of a young murdered girl, Isobel, uses to track down her killer. A penultimate scene which Thompson cut after the first workshop production of the play, was restored for the 1999 Theatre Kingston
Theatre Kingston
Theatre Kingston is a theatre company located in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.Founded in 1990 as Theatre Beyond by Paul Gelineau, the company became The People's Theatre Kingston in 1992 and had two more Artistic Directors under that name—Kathryn MacKay and Kathleen LeRoux...
production, and Thompson has since then included the scene in published editions of the play as one of two alternative versions. Productions of the play have been held in a wide variety of North American locations, including: Toronto, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Portland and Vancouver, but also Łódź, Poland.
Sled (1997), which began life as a seven-hour play called The Last Things, but was later cut down to three hours, attempts again to pursue human violence back to its sources. Thompson first wrote Perfect Pie
Perfect Pie
Perfect Pie is a play written by Judith Thompson, and first staged at Toronto's Tarragon Theatre in 2000, with Judith Thompson also directing....
as a short monologue for television in 1993, but in 2000 expanded the story into full-length play about two teenaged girls whose lives diverge dramatically after a violent incident. In 2002, Perfect Pie was also made into a feature film of that name, which, while satisfying in itself, offered a more conventional version of the uncanny story told in Thompson's play. Habitat, which premiered in 2001 at CanStage, the major regional theatre in Toronto, shows how a middle-class community is torn apart into factions when a group home for troubled youth is established on a quiet residential street. Capture Me, which premiered in early 2004 at the Tarragon Theatre
Tarragon Theatre
The Tarragon Theatre is a theatre in Toronto, Canada, and one of the main centers for contemporary playwriting in the country. Located near Casa Loma, the theatre was founded by Bill and Jane Glassco in 1970. Bill was the Artistic Director from 1971 to 1982. In 1982, Urjo Kareda took over as...
in Toronto, is centred on a kindergarten teacher who, while searching for her birth mother, is stalked by her violent ex-husband.
In 1991, she adapted and directed Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...
's Hedda Gabler
Hedda Gabler
Hedda Gabler is a play first published in 1890 by Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. The play premiered in 1891 in Germany to negative reviews, but has subsequently gained recognition as a classic of realism, nineteenth century theatre, and world drama...
for the Shaw Festival
Shaw Festival
The Shaw Festival is a major Canadian theatre festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, the second largest repertory theatre company in North America...
. A remount of Thompson's adaptation appeared at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in 2005. Her adaptation was also performed at the Mainline Theatre in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
in February 2008. Her translation of Serge Boucher's Motel Hélène appeared at the Tarragon Theatre in 2001.
Thompson's work embraces visceral and subconscious elements of human experience which are seldom seen on stage. While the ambitiousness of her scope can occasionally result in plays which seem somewhat unwieldy in their form, she has an astonishing gift for providing theatrical experiences which incisively reach the deepest recesses of her audience's imaginations.
She is currently a professor at the University of Guelph
University of Guelph
The University of Guelph, also known as U of G, is a comprehensive public research university in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. It was established in 1964 after the amalgamation of Ontario Agricultural College, the Macdonald Institute, and the Ontario Veterinary College...
, where she teaches acting and playwriting courses.
Major works by Thompson
- The Crackwalker - 1980
- White Biting Dog - 1984
- Turning to Stone - 1986
- I Am Yours - 1987
- Lion in the StreetsLion in the StreetsLion in the Streets is a two-act play by award-winning Canadian playwright Judith Thompson and was workshopped as the first Public Workshop Project at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, Canada in May of 1990. It was then produced in its now published form one month later at the duMaurier Theatre...
- 1990 - Sled - 1997
- Perfect PiePerfect PiePerfect Pie is a play written by Judith Thompson, and first staged at Toronto's Tarragon Theatre in 2000, with Judith Thompson also directing....
- 2000 - Habitat - 2001
- Lost and DeliriousLost and DeliriousLost and Delirious is a 2001 Canadian drama film directed by Léa Pool and loosely based on the novel The Wives of Bath by Susan Swan. Lost and Delirious is filmed from the perspective of Mary , who observes the changing love between her two teenage friends, Pauline and Victoria...
- 2001 - Capture Me - 2004
- Enoch Arden, by Alfred Lord Jabber and his catatonic songstress - 2005
- Palace of the EndPalace of the EndPalace of the End is a docudrama play by Judith Thompson, that consists of three monologues telling real-life tales of Iraq before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq...
- 2007 - Such Creatures - 2010
Awards and honours
Thompson has won the Governor General’s AwardGovernor General's Award for English language drama
This is a list of recipients of the Governor General's Award for English-language drama. The award was created in 1981 when the Governor General's Award for English language poetry or drama was divided.-1980s:*1981: Sharon Pollock, Blood Relations...
for Drama, in 1985 for her play, White Biting Dog; and in 1989 for a collection of her plays, The Other Side of the Dark. She has won a Toronto Arts Award and the Canadian Authors Association Award. She is the recipient of several Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Awards, including one in 1987 for I Am Yours, and in 1991 for Lion in the Streets. Tornado won an award for Best Radio Drama in 1988. Thompson has received several Dora Mavor Moore Awards from the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts. In 2005, she was made an Officer of the Order of Canada
Order of Canada
The Order of Canada is a Canadian national order, admission into which is, within the system of orders, decorations, and medals of Canada, the second highest honour for merit...
, and in 2007 she was awarded the Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts by the Canada Council for the Arts. In 2008 she became the first Canadian to be awarded Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
The Susan Smith Blackburn Prize established in 1978, is for English-language women playwrights. Named for Susan Smith, alumna of Smith College, who died of breast cancer.-Winners:* 1978-79 Mary O'Malley* 1979-80 Barbara Schneider...
, which recognizes outstanding women playwrights each year.