Latest news with #GovernorGeneralsAward
CBC
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
For Hannah Moscovitch, writing her plays is like exploring herself with a knife
Social Sharing It's never easy for Hannah Moscovitch to reveal her most devastating experiences to strangers. Nonetheless, the Canadian playwright says the results are always worth it. "I'm prouder of the plays that I've written where I've taken a knife and I've explored myself," Moscovitch tells Q 's Tom Power in an interview. "I think that they expose truth more clearly." Her latest show, Red Like Fruit, tells the story of Lauren, a journalist covering a high profile domestic violence case. Over the course of the play, Lauren starts to reexamine her own past experiences with men. WATCH | Official trailer for Red Like Fruit: Moscovitch says she understands that #MeToo politics are messy — that's why her show is about asking questions, not telling the audience what to think. "I often want to do plays that leave you with ambiguities," Moscovitch says. "[Plays] that show you nuance and sophistication, and many points of view represented within them.… Especially in a piece like Red Like Fruit. I think a lot of people who have had similar experiences are actually struggling with the fact that it's not right or wrong. Or it's not clear to them. Or they don't know." When Moscovitch began her career, she wanted to make lighthearted entertainment, and she wanted to act. But that was not her destiny — she was raised by ardent social activists, and her drama school teachers quickly spotted that she was better as a writer than a performer. Now, Moscovitch is a Governor General's Award-winning playwright. Many of her works have been acclaimed for offering uncompromising insights into the unspoken experiences of women. She says she wasn't willing to delve into this complex territory at the beginning of her career — it took time to find the courage. "I got braver and I got older, and I got more willing to be vulnerable," Moscovitch explains. "I got willing to, you know, turn my own gaze on myself in a way that I wouldn't have been comfortable with when I was a younger writer." She's glad that she's found a way to push past her fears, and connect with people who need to be heard. "There's something original about anything that has never been spoken," Moscovitch says. "And then there's a whole audience out there that feels so relieved that it's being spoken for the first time. And they love you for it. And you feel good."
CBC
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
When actor Graham Greene got the call that he'd won a Governor General's Award, he thought it was a prank
Social Sharing With a dry sense of humour and a penchant for teasing, it's no wonder that acclaimed actor Graham Greene believed his own friends were pranking him when he got the call from Governor General Mary Simon's office letting him know he'd be receiving a Governor General's Performing Arts Award. "'Yeah, yeah, who is it?'" he recalls saying. "I found out it was true, and I said, 'Oh my gosh, I'm terribly sorry, I thought it was some friends playing a joke.' The same thing happened when I got the Order of Canada, I thought somebody was pulling my leg." The 72-year-old actor will be receiving a Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award for his vast body of work in stage and screen, which includes unforgettable portrayals of chiefs, medicine men, doctors, a judge (Molly's Game), a detective (Die Hard with a Vengeance) and a death row inmate (The Green Mile). For his performance as Kicking Bird, a Sioux medicine man in the 1990 film Dances with Wolves, he earned an Academy Award nomination. Often playing specifically Indigenous characters, and frequently speaking languages and representing tribes and nations not his own (he's Oneida from the Six Nations of the Grand River), Greene is one of the most recognizable Indigenous actors in North America. "It's wonderful to be recognized in your own country, and I'm grateful for that," he says. "I'm just a working actor and I'm lucky enough to survive as long as I did in the business. There's a lot of better actors that have not survived and there's some that are still active that never got any recognition, which is unfortunate." His four decades of acting all stemmed from Greene's fascination with human behaviour when he was a sound engineer for bands. He'd sit behind the sound console and watch the crowds instead of the band. "I just picked somebody and started asking questions and making things up about them." Filling in a character's backstory came naturally to him in film, but he wanted to bring more confidence to his acting, so he did theatre to develop discipline and learn "how to dance," as he calls ad-libbing. Some of his favourite "dance partners" have been Felicity Huffman and Mel Gibson, from Transamerica and Maverick, respectively. Actors Graham Greene and Tantoo Cardinal 4 days ago Duration 5:33 Two Canadian actors discuss what it was like to work with Hollywood's Kevin Costner in the 1990 movie Dances with Wolves. Despite announcing his retirement from acting, he says he gets more calls than ever. He tells his agent to send only the good stuff, and his requirements include working four days or less, very little dialogue and "a lot of money." Acclaimed television series The Last of Us and Reservation Dogs must have fit the criteria, as Greene made notable appearances in both in recent years. Sometimes, a little convincing brings him into the fold. The 2024 thriller/comedy Seeds was written specifically for Greene by the film's writer, director and star, Kaniehtiio Horn. "She says, 'I wrote a role for you, and you better do it.' I said, 'Well, I guess I better.'" Seeds is the closing night film of imagineNATIVE Film Festival, where Greene will receive another lifetime award, the August Schellenberg Award of Excellence.
CBC
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Canadian author Michael Crummey wins $154K Dublin Literary Award
Social Sharing Michael Crummey has won the Dublin Literary Award for his novel The Adversary. The Newfoundland writer will receive €100,000 (approximately $153,610 Cdn) as part of the prize, which is awarded annually to the best work of fiction in English from anywhere in the world. This year, the prize celebrates its 30th year in operation. Crummey is recognized for his novel The Adversary, about a heated sibling rivalry to represent the largest fishing operations on Newfoundland's northern outpost. When a wedding that would have secured Abe Strapp's hold on the shore falls apart, it sets off a series of events that lead to year after year of violence and vendettas and a seemingly endless feud. Crummey is also the author of the novels The Innocents, Sweetland and Galore and the poetry collections Arguments with Gravity and Passengers. Two of Crummey's novels have been shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction — Sweetland in 2014 and Galore in 2009. This year's winner was selected from a jury comprised of writer Fiona Sze-Lorrain, writer Gerbrand Bakker, scholar Leonard Cassuto, author Martina Devlin and poet Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe. The jury was chaired by Chris Morash, a professor at Trinity College Dublin, who does not vote. "Michael Crummey's The Adversary compellingly and convincingly immerses its readers in a world previously lost to fiction, and almost lost to memory: a Newfoundland outport from the early years of the colony, connected to the world outside only by the occasional supply ship," said the jury in a press statement. The award was announced today at the International Literature Festival Dublin, a ten-day celebration of literature and culture held in Dublin's Merrion Square Park, where Crummey will join writer Madeleine Keane for a conversation about The Adversary on May 23. Crummey is the only Canadian to have made this year's shortlist from the seven who were on the longlist. The Dublin prize's longlist was compiled by library nominations from around the world, while a jury selects the shortlist and winner from these submissions. The other books on the shortlist are Not a River by Selva Almada, translated from Spanish by Annie McDermot, We Are Light by Gerda Blees, translated from Dutch by Michele Hutchison, James by Percival Everett, Prophet Song by Paul Lynch and North Woods by Daniel Mason. Last year's winner was Solenoid by Romanian author Mircea Cărtărescu and translator Sean Cotter.
