 Selkirk
Avenue
AUTHOR: Bruce McManus ISBN: 0921833571
When it was shortlisted for the 1998 Governor General's Award for Drama, the jury said of Selkirk Avenue: "Quintessentially Canadian in its content, the play's appeal resides in McManus's skill in drawing us into the particular and varied lives of inhabitants of Winnipeg's North End over 75 years, and in doing so, speaking to all of us."
REVIEWS: "McManus could be called Winnipeg's playwright laureate, with a reputation for realistic characters, crisp dialogue and meticulous attention to his craft. All these strengths are displayed in Selkirk Avenue, an almost faultless dramatic portrait."— Theatrum
"A sensitive yet hard-hitting portrait, Selkirk Avenue is a roller coaster of emotions...Outrageously funny, tenderly touching and as down and dirty mean as a North End mongrel." —Uptown
"McManus has crafted a story whose broad reach is matched by its sure grasp. The history of Selkirk Avenue as a haven-cum-springboard for successive minorities is told in a complex but comprehensible and emotionally irresistible tale that winds back and forth through the 30s, 50s, and the present." —Winnipeg Free Press
"Selkirk Avenue. It's just one of those Winnipeg things. Say the words, and a picture comes to mind. What better way, then, to tell the story of Selkirk Avenue than through the eyes of a photographer? And that's just what Bruce McManus's new play Selkirk Avenue does, and does very, very well. The play looks at the lives of three families over three decades, as longtime Selkirk Avenue resident Harold the photographer remembers them. All three families were once boarders in Harold's home. Three different cultures: Jewish, Polish, and Native Canadian—three different problems: a marriage, a job, a move from home—but all one way of living, desperately private and ludicrously public under the lights of Selkirk Avenue. It's a beautifully written show, timeless and yet with the fresh feeling of something wonderfully new. Selkirk Avenue is touching, and angry, and sad and wise all at once. It's also very funny, and very 'right,' in the way fiction can sometimes come closer to truth than fact." —The Winnipeg Sun
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SHORTLISTED
FOR THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S AWARD FOR DRAMA
ABOUT THE BOOK: