Animals
From acclaimed playwright Karen Hines come two darkly comic meditations on security, safety, and shelter.
Crawlspace is a comic, Kafkaesque monologue about the darker side of home ownership that moves past ‘cautionary’ as it snakes through the brutal battleground of Toronto 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 one sleep-deprived young woman, the ghosts of brilliant authors, some well-heeled professionals, meth-curious lambs, a puppet in a beatnik onesie, tiny vertebrates, glowing arthropods, and other unexpected voices.
Drama: Pilot Episode
When a troubled young television writer hangs himself with his Banff Television Festival conference lanyard, urgent spirits creep up through the fracks, and connections are drawn between pregnant oil wives, the 44-minute television hour and the future of the human soul. A deep dark comedy for all souls, set in Canada's wild new west.
Drama does what drama does best – holds up a mirror to the audeince and makes them think their individual concerns are part of a larger drama being played out in the world. I can't imagine a person in the Western world who would be left untouched by the great drama of souls Hines creates here.
—Alberta Views
Hello... Hello (A Romantic Satire) by Karen Hines
Karen Hines's genre-defying 4-person play with songs has been presented at Toronto's Factory Theatre and Tarragon Theatre, and was a multiple Dora, Chalmers and Canadian Comedy Award nominee, as well as winner of the 2007 Alberta Writers Guild Award for Drama.
In the vast, unnamed metropolis of Hello … hello, art and commerce have finally and completely conjoined; stylish cafés serve up zebra mussels and the air is thick with a gentle rain of sparrows plummeting down from the mirrored office towers. Everywhere, people are falling for an edgy new fashion accessory: a shiny ball filled with poison that hangs from a delicate chain...
The momentum and perspicacity of this inventive play is evident on the page. It is also obvious why Hines is lauded as one of the nation's premier dramatists.'
– Eye Weekly
A deliciously dark slice of urban whimsy ... who else [but Hines] could take the horrible image of birds crashing into mirrored skyscrapers and plummeting to their deaths and imbue it with such melancholy charm?
– Books in Canada
With influences as diverse and seemingly mismatched as Greek tragedy and mid-century Hollywood musicals, Karen Hines's latest satire is a bizarrely compelling work.
– Quill & Quire
The Pochsy Plays
Finalist for the 2004 Governor General’s Award for Drama; Winner of the 2005 Alberta Writers Guild Award for Drama; Finalist for Chalmers Award for best play. Also nominated for six Dora Awards; Dora Award for performance. Now in its second printing.
Beckett meets Betty Boop in this trilogy of monologues by Canadian cult heroine Pochsy. In The Pochsy Plays, Hines remodels and melds traditions like stand-up, absurdism, clowning and neo-cabaret to create some of the most original and cutting satire to hit the stage - and, now, the page. Pochsy garbles ad slogans, self-help mantras and desperate grabs at meaning into a postmodern pastiche that is hilarious and harrowing, sweet and bitter at the same time. With extensive photos, musical scores by Greg Morrison, the collaboration of director Sandra Bacovskeand an introduction by Darren O'Donnell.
From the reviews:
'This beautifully produced collection is a valuable record of Hines's work ... The Pochsy Plays is a welcome record of a unique creation that should also allow this cult figure to become more widely known.'
– Letters in Canada
'Whether she's sending up loneliness and love or shallow ambition and greed, Hines's satire is dead-on ... Along with Hines's illuminating, intelligent introduction to the character and her style, photos and performance stills provide readers a fair sense of Pochsy's stage effect.'
– Border Crossing
Pochsy is a startling and original character: smart, bitter, hopeful, savage – and terribly funny. Hines has created a weirdly familiar world where the hurt arrives a single heartbeat after the joke."
– From the GG Nominations Page