Bouche Theatre Collective

HAVEN

By Mishka Lavigne | Translated by Neil Blackadder

With Mishka Lavigne (Ottawa), Neil Blackadder (Chicago), Johanna Nutter (Montreal), Art Kitching & Jack Paterson (Vancouver)

Elsie has just lost her mother, and Matt, is searching for his past. They’re brought together by the hole that opened up in the asphalt and the contents of the car that fell to the bottom. Haven is a play about loss, about absence, about emptiness. But it’s also a play about overflow, about too many memories and too many regrets. Haven speaks of friendships of necessity. Of the people we meet when we need them the most; those we meet when everything around us crumbles. Haven in the storm. Recipient of the Governor General’s Award for Drama French Language (2019).

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT

Mishka Lavigne (she, her, hers)

Mishka Lavigne is a playwright and literary translator based in Ottawa/Gatineau. Her translation work for theatre has been seen in Ottawa, Montreal, and France. Héritage, her translation of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun opened the 2019-2020 season at Duceppe in Montreal. She is currently working on a French translation of Karen Hines’ All The Little Animals I Have Eaten. Her translations of poetry were published in Ontario and Québec, included the recently published Cette blessure est un territoire, a French translation of Billy-Ray Belcourt’s Griffin Poetry Prize winning collection This Wound is a World. Her own works include Cinéma (Théâtre la Catapulte and Théâtre Belvédère.), Vigile (Théâtre Rouge Écarlate). Her play Havre recently won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama (French).

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Neil Blackadder (she, her, hers)

Neil Blackadder recently retired as Professor of Theatre at Knox College, where he had taught since 1998. He began translating drama and short fiction in 2002. In 2004, he was certified as a German > English translator by the American Translators Association. Neil is also the author of Performing Opposition: Modern Theater and the Scandalized Audience (Praeger, 2003).

In 2011, Neil was awarded a fellowship from the Howard Foundation (Brown University) and a PEN Translation Fund Grant to translate plays by Lukas Bärfuss. Neil has twice held residencies at the Banff International Literary Translation Centre and Writers Omi at Ledig House. His work has often been supported by the Goethe-Institut, as well as by the Consulate General of Switzerland and the Austrian Cultural Forum.

Active member of ALTA: the American Literary Translators Association. Founding member of TinT: the Theatre in Translation Network. Member of The Fence, and of the Third Coast Translators Collective. Recently took on the role of Translations Editor for Another Chicago Magazine.

Bouche Theatre Collective (Vancouver, Canada)

Founded in 2012, Bouche has been bringing artists and audiences together separated by language, distance, and culture locally, nationally, and internationally.  With a specific focus on the cross pollination between Canadian francophone and anglophone artists and the international community, Bouche reaches out through translation, multi-lingual work, and devised creation. www.bouchewhacked.com