Alien Creature: a visitation from Gwendolyn MacEwen is inspired by MacEwen's life and work, yet is an entirely new creation. MacEwen, as evoked by Linda Griffiths, returns to a modern world one night, bringing images and a prophetic warning. There has been a death of poetry, of imagination. The city will pay. The world will pay. Then she laughs, opens her hands, pulling brilliant scarves from the air. On this night, MacEwen is torn apart by her magic, made invincible by her magic. Revealed as drunk, lover, poet, and magician, Gwendolyn MacEwen rises to inspire and incite us.

Nominated for the 2000 Governor General's Literary Award, winner of a 2000 Chalmers Canadian Play Award.

Linda Griffiths is an actress, producer, and writer. Griffiths is a founding member of 25th Street Theatre in Saskatoon and one of the original cast members in its collective creation Paper Wheat (1978), which toured sold-out houses across Canada. A year later, she performed in another collective creation, Les Maudits Anglais, in Montreal under the direction of future co-writer, Paul Thompson. Griffiths’s first major success came when she and Thompson collaborated to write Maggie and Pierre, a one-person, three-character play that bases its narrative structure on events in Pierre and Margaret Trudeau’s life together. Maggie and Pierre toured Canada, played the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto, and Off Broadway at the Phoenix Theatre.

Griffiths has also written O.D. in Paradise (first produced in 1982 at 25th Street Theatre); Jessica (with Maria Campbell, first produced in 1984 at 25th Street Theatre and later at Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille in 1986); The Darling Family (first produced in 1991 at Theatre Passe Muraille, made in 1993 into a feature film); Brother André’s Heart (first produced in 1992 at Crow’s Theatre, Toronto); and The Duchess (first produced in 1998 at Theatre Passe Muraille). Between 1986 and 1988, Griffiths was co-artistic director of Theatre Passe Muraille, along with Layne Coleman and Clarke Rogers. Griffiths has received many awards for her contributions to the theatre world. She has won five Dora Mavor Moore awards, including wins for Maggie and Pierre (1980), O.D. in Paradise (1983), Jessica (1986), and Alien Creature (2000); a Gemini award; two Chalmers Canadian Play Awards for Jessica (1986) and Alien Creature (2000); and a Quizanne International Festival award for Jessica (1987). She has twice been nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Griffiths started her own company, Duchess Productions (1997), which produced the tour of Alien Creature. In addition to her plays, Griffiths writes fiction and poetry. In 1999, an anthology of her work, Sheer Nerve: Seven Plays by Linda Griffiths, was published. Her latest play, The Age of Arousal, premiered at Alberta Theatre Projects’s Enbridge playRites Festival in 2007.

Linda Griffiths' profile page

• Short-listed, Governor General's Award
• Winner, Chalmer's Canadian Play Award
• Winner, Dora Mavor Moore Award