Little Death

by Karasik, Daniel Sarah

• ISBN13: 9781771661805
• ISBN10: 1771661801
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2015-04-17
• Publisher: Book*hug Press

Summary

Alex may or may not be dying. Confronted with his mortality, he searches for sex and connection in hotel bars -- with his wife Brit's conflicted blessing. Little Death, the lyrical new drama from CBC Fiction Prize-winner and Dora Award-nominated playwright Daniel Karasik, is a gripping study of sexuality under extreme pressure. Tender and fierce by turns, in precise, musical language that straddles the boundary between poetic verse and dramatic prose, this play for six actors (5 F, 1 M) asks fundamental questions about marriage, fidelity, and the intimate needs of men and women.

Prior to its premiere production at Toronto's Theatre Centre in April 2015, Little Death was developed at the Royal Court Theatre in London, UK, the Tarragon Theatre and Stratford Festival in Canada, and off-Broadway's The New Group. Influenced by contemporary European dramatic forms, the play's style is hybrid--it exists for the reader as a poem, yet it has an innate theatricality that calls out for full elaboration on stage.

Spare and enigmatic, Little Death allows the reader, director, actors, and audience to fill out its shadows with their own intuitions and truths. In the vein of Anne Carson's The Beauty of the Husband and Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage, the play will delight theatre fans, poetry lovers, and anyone interested in thought-provoking art about life and love, sex and death. It is a deeply felt work from one of Canada's most exciting young talents.

Author Biography

Daniel Karasik is a writer of plays, poetry, and fiction. He is a winner of the CBC Literary Award for Fiction (2012) and the Toronto Arts Foundation's Emerging Artist Award (2013). His plays have been produced across Canada, in the US, and frequently in translation in Germany; The Biographer, produced in Toronto in 2013, garnered a Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination for Outstanding New Play. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Western Magazine Award for his fiction and the National Magazine Award for his poetry, he is the author of two previous books of plays published by Playwrights Canada Press, a poetry collection with Cormorant Books, and a short story collection forthcoming in 2017 from Guernica Editions. His newest plays are in development with Toronto's Tarragon Theatre, where he is an incoming playwright-in-residence, and Whynot Theatre; off-Broadway's The New Group; and the Stratford Festival, from which he holds a commission. He writes about art and politics at www.danielkarasik.com. Connect with Karasik on Twitter @daniel_karasik.