The David French Party

Coco

Mid-Card Championship Winner
Because there're two types of people in the world: Newfies and thems that wishes they was. I'm the latter.

RIP David

Pledge below with an RIP David
 
David French (playwright)
David French
Born 18 January 1939
Coley's Point, Newfoundland, Canada
Died 5 December 2010 (aged*71)
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Cause*of death Brain Cancer
Occupation Playwright
David French, OC (January 18, 1939*– December 5, 2010) was a Canadian playwright.
Early life
French was born in the tiny Newfoundland outport of Coley’s Point,
[1]
the middle child in a family of five boys. His
father, Garfield French, was a carpenter, and during World War II worked for the Eastern Air Command in Canada.
After the war, David’s mother, Edith, came to Ontario with the boys to join their father and the family settled in
Toronto among a thriving community of Newfoundlandian immigrants.
French attended Rawlinson Public School, Harbord Collegiate, and Oakwood Collegiate. He was indifferent to
books until Grade 8, when his English teacher, to punish him for talking in class, told French to sit down and read a
book. The book David happened to pull off the shelf was Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. French says
that by the time he finished reading it, he not only knew that he wanted to be a writer
[1]
– he knew that he was one.
Almost immediately he began to publish original stories and poems.
After high school, French trained as an actor. He spent a summer at the Pasadena Playhouse, and studied at various
acting studios in Toronto. In the early 1960s, he played roles on stage and in CBC television dramas. Then he began
writing for television. Over the next several years he wrote many half-hour dramas, including The Tender Branch, A
Ring for Florie, Beckons the Dark River, Sparrow on a Monday Morning, and The Willow Harp. He also wrote
episodes of the popular children’s program Razzle Dazzle.
Work for the stage
The Mercer family play cycle
In 1971, he became aware of a new theatre, the Tarragon in Toronto, that was producing a play called Creeps. After
seeing the play, French was so impressed that he called up the director, Bill Glassco, and asked him to read a play he
had been working on, Leaving Home (1972). Glasco produced the play and it filled the final slot in the Tarragon’s
first season. A collaboration between the two men followed which lasted for over thirty years, with Glassco directing
each of French’s premiere productions.
Leaving Home is a landmark play in Canadian theatre history. After its very successful run in Toronto in 1972, the
play went on to be produced at virtually every regional theatre in the country – the first Canadian play ever to do so.
It also received many international productions, including an off-Broadway run. Leaving Home is taught in high
schools and universities across Canada, and is one of the most familiar of Canadian plays. It was named one of the
“100 Most Influential Canadian Books” by the Literary Review of Canada) and one of the “1,000 Essential Plays in
the English Language” in the Oxford Dictionary of Theatre.
[2]
Leaving Home introduced audiences to the Mercer
family, who would come to figure largely in David’s work. The Mercers, like the Frenches, were a Newfoundland
family transplanted to Toronto.David French (playwright) 2
Of The Fields, Lately (1973
[3]
), French's sequel to Leaving Home, also produced at the Tarragon, won the Chalmers
Award for 1973.
[1]
“I wrote it because people kept asking me what happened to the Mercers after Ben leaves home,”
said French. It was adapted for CBC television and was produced across Canada and abroad, including a critically
acclaimed run in Argentina (in a Spanish translation) and a production on Broadway.
French eventually wrote five plays about the Mercer family. Salt-Water Moon (1984), the third play, is a poetic
drama about the courtship of the parents, set in Newfoundland in 1926. Salt-Water Moon has had hundreds of
productions since its original run. The French language version, translated by Antonine Maillet, has been produced
across Canada. Salt-Water Moon won the Canadian Authors Association Award for Drama, the Dora Mavor Moore
Award for Best New Play, and the Hollywood Drama-Logue Critics’ Award.
1949 (1988), a fond look at the extended Mercer clan as Newfoundland prepares to join Confederation, premiered at
CentreStage. And Soldier’s Heart, which explores the effect of the First World War on two generations of Mercers,
was produced at the Tarragon in 2001. Toronto's Soulpepper Theatre has done acclaimed revivals of Leaving Home
and Salt-Water Moon, with a Of The Fields, Lately revival running during the summer of 2010.
[4]
Other work
The immensely popular backstage comedy Jitters (1979) has been regularly revived in Canada, and enjoyed a
six-month run at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut. Other works include the memory play That
Summer (1999), which opened the Blyth Festival’s 25th Anniversary Season; the mystery-thriller Silver Dagger
(1993), a finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award; One Crack Out (1975) a pool-hall drama produced in Toronto and
off-Broadway, and the comedy The Riddle of the World (1981). All of his plays have been published and are in print.
(Talonbooks and Anansi).
French also undertook translations of Miss Julie (August Strindberg), The Forest (Alexander Ostrovsky), and of
Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, a version of which was produced on Broadway starring Laura Linney, Ethan Hawke,
Jon Voight, and Tyne Daley. French was helped by Russian scholars when preparing the latter two texts.
[1]
As a senior playwright, David mentored many aspiring writers. He was Writer-in-Residence at the University of
Windsor
[2]
(2007/08) and The University of Western Ontario (2002/03), and has done a short-term residency at
Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. He taught a course in playwriting each summer at the Prince Edward
Island (PEI) Conservatory.
[2]
He also gave Canada Council-sponsored readings from coast to coast, and often visited
high schools and universities that were studying his plays. French’s work is popular with community theatre groups
across North America.
David French was the first inductee in the Newfoundland Arts Hall of Honour. He received the Queen’s Jubilee
Medal, and the Harold, (a Toronto theatre peer award). He was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2001.
He died in Toronto on December 5, 2010 from brain cancer.
[5]
Works
• Leaving Home - 1972
• Of the Fields, Lately - 1973
• One Crack Out - 1975
• Jitters - 1979
• Salt-Water Moon - 1985 (nominated for a Governor General's Award)
[6]
• 1949 - 1989
• Silver Dagger - 1993
• That Summer - 2000
• Soldier's Heart - 2003

RIP David.
 
For far too long, the Spam Zone has been the butt of many a joke around here. Just like Newfoundland. But just as Newfies know their land is home to more than incest and fishing, us spam section devotees know that this is the part of the board that allows for the most natural, concise, heated, intellectual discussion in town. We cut through the bullshit. We make things interesting. We keep the good posters coming back. We're more than just a recycling bin for threads Nick thinks are unfit for the WWE section. And the David French Party is going to give the Spam Zone a leader it deserves.

Who's with me?!
 
For far too long, the Spam Zone has been the butt of many a joke around here. Just like Newfoundland. But just as Newfies know their land is home to more than incest and fishing, us spam section devotees know that this is the part of the board that allows for the most natural, concise, heated, intellectual discussion in town. We cut through the bullshit. We make things interesting. We keep the good posters coming back. We're more than just a recycling bin for threads Nick thinks are unfit for the WWE section. And the David French Party is going to give the Spam Zone a leader it deserves.

Who's with me?!

If WZ's main attraction is order, by David French, even the Spam section should have it too.
 
David French didn't write order. He was just great at capturing the voice of the people. Regional dialects especially.
 
According to Wikipedia, there are two Canadians called David French. One's a playwright and the other is a white supremacist. I'm guessing your talking about the playwright.

I'm with you. RIP David.
 
I like awesome_miz's optimism.

I was part of Sam's cynic party back in the day when we were supposed to elect sheriffs and what not. That never happened. I wonder if this will...
 
What awesome_miz means is that the free rep will be coming from Sam and I.

And that isn't what's going to happen. The David French Party doesn't give bribes. But we do know how to "scratch your back," if you catch my extremely blunt drift.
 
For far too long, the Spam Zone has been the butt of many a joke around here. Just like Newfoundland. But just as Newfies know their land is home to more than incest and fishing, us spam section devotees know that this is the part of the board that allows for the most natural, concise, heated, intellectual discussion in town. We cut through the bullshit. We make things interesting. We keep the good posters coming back. We're more than just a recycling bin for threads Nick knows are unfit for the WWE section. And the David French Party is going to give the Spam Zone a leader it deserves.

Record straightened.
 
I have reason to display bias toward Coco, as I have been the recipient of his "provocation", but I can look at things objectively and see that he is a mightily good poster.
 

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