Gordon Pengilly

Gordon Pengilly has written more than fifty plays for TV, film, radio and the stage. His work including Seeds, Swipe, Metastasis, Yours ‘til The Moon Falls Down, Tom Three Persons, Tom Form And The Speed Of Love, Contraption and They Don’t Call Them Farmers Anymore has been produced across Canada and abroad. His screenplay Drumheller Or Dangerous Times won the 2003 Writer’s Guild of Canada Jim Burt Prize and was workshopped at the Praxis Centre for Screenwriting. His play The Work Play which premiered in New York at the Actor’s Loft in 2000, then in Japan in 2002, was made into a short film in Los Angeles and shown at Fourth Wall Screenings 2005. Hardhats And Stolen Hearts co‐created with Theatre Network was one of the first Canadian plays to be performed Off‐Broadway at the Performing...

Gordon Pengilly has written more than fifty plays for TV, film, radio and the stage. His work including Seeds, Swipe, Metastasis, Yours ‘til The Moon Falls Down, Tom Three Persons, Tom Form And The Speed Of Love, Contraption and They Don’t Call Them Farmers Anymore has been produced across Canada and abroad. His screenplay Drumheller Or Dangerous Times won the 2003 Writer’s Guild of Canada Jim Burt Prize and was workshopped at the Praxis Centre for Screenwriting. His play The Work Play which premiered in New York at the Actor’s Loft in 2000, then in Japan in 2002, was made into a short film in Los Angeles and shown at Fourth Wall Screenings 2005. Hardhats And Stolen Hearts co‐created with Theatre Network was one of the first Canadian plays to be performed Off‐Broadway at the Performing Garage in 1978.
Gordon is one of the most prolific radio dramatists in Canada. In 1989 CBC selected The Ballad Of An Existential Cowboy as one its Best‐of‐Decade. In The Middle Of Town Stands The Dreamland was nominated for Peabody Award in 1993 and rebroadcast in Australia. His 13‐part mystery series Bailey’s Way was aired in 1999‐2000 then again in 2001 on XM‐Satellite out of Washington DC. Seeing In the Dark received the 2007 BBC International Radio Drama Prize and was broadcast on the World Service.
A screenplay version of Seeing In The Dark won the Canadian Short Screenplay Competition. It was shot in Regina by Year of the Skunk Productions and premiered at the Edmonton International Film Festival 2011, in Toronto at Short ‘N Sweet, then again at the Toronto Independent Film Festival 2012. His newest play Flesh & Ghost written for Theatre Calgary as part of Fuse 09 was recently workshopped by the Playwright Theatre Centre in Vancouver then showcased at the Manhattan Theater Club by Broad Horizons Theater of New York. Tom Form And The Speed Of Love was produced by Broad Horizons at the 2013 Edmonton International Fringe Festival.
Gordon has been resident playwright or dramaturg for theatres and institutions in Edmonton, Calgary, Banff, Red Deer, Toronto, Victoria, New Brunswick, Dublin and Texas, and he routinely runs workshops for Alberta Playwrights Network. His first collection of plays Metastasis And Other Plays published by NeWest Press received the 2009 W.O. Mitchell Book Prize.

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Scripts

Flesh & Ghost

by Gordon Pengilly

Cast Size
4
Genre
drama

Michael’s world collapsed seven years ago with his daughter’s sudden disappearance on her tenth birthday. His renewed efforts to find her are strangely fruitful resulting in not only the discovery of a homeless teenager but perhaps an entire new world where different versions of events are possible. The play is inspired by the nonlinear pathways and strange sculptures found in quantum mechanics where particles...

Michael’s world collapsed seven years ago with his daughter’s sudden disappearance on her tenth birthday. His renewed efforts to find her are strangely fruitful resulting in not only the discovery of a homeless teenager but perhaps an entire new world where different versions of events are possible. The play is inspired by the nonlinear pathways and strange sculptures found in quantum mechanics where particles appear out of nowhere and alternative universes are surprisingly real.

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Bare Trees

by Gordon Pengilly

Cast Size
4
Genre
drama

Bare Trees is about a soldier who returns from war. Like so many, he’s been emotionally and psychologically scarred, and, like so many, he has blocked things out. These things, these horrible things, are still in his mind though and they won’t be still. The play follows the progress of his treatment of combat-fatigue in a non-linear fashion; non-linear because it’s meant to reflect what’s happening in his mind...

Bare Trees is about a soldier who returns from war. Like so many, he’s been emotionally and psychologically scarred, and, like so many, he has blocked things out. These things, these horrible things, are still in his mind though and they won’t be still. The play follows the progress of his treatment of combat-fatigue in a non-linear fashion; non-linear because it’s meant to reflect what’s happening in his mind, the war intruding on him in unpredictable and frightening ways, the past and the present weaving through the play simultaneously. The therapist’s relationship to the soldier and his young wife becomes ever more complicated as he delves into the mysteries and secrets of the soldier’s lost days, and when the soldier’s wartime lover appears the story takes a surprising turn. As explored in Bare Trees, the line between heroism and cowardice is not so clear, and neither are our reasons for fighting at all; war creates such incongruities, though the horrors of war are not at all ambiguous and the effects of war stay forever.

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