• Age: 14 to 18
• Grade: 9 to 12

Una poderosa historia, ambientada en Oriente Próximo, que muestra como la guerra, la religión, el odio y la venganza destruyen las vidas de inocentes convirtiéndolos en mártires.

Novela ganadora del Premio de los Libreros de Quebec y del Premio Literario Collégiens.

Cuando Amed llora, su hermano Aziz llora también; y cuando Amed ríe, su hermano Aziz ríe también. Ambos lo comparten todo en una pequeña tierra de Oriente Próximo, en la casa de sus padres y abuelos, donde el paraíso tiene forma de jardines frutales y naranjales.

Pero un día un obús rasga el cielo y separa personas, hermanos y sentimientos. A partir de entonces, la guerra será el trasfondo en el que dos hermanos tendrán que afrontar la desdicha de lo que significan palabras como "sangre", "venganza" y "mártir", olvidando el sueño de aquel paraíso perdido.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

Twin brothers Amed and Aziz live in the peaceful shade of their family's orange grove. But when a bomb kills the boys' grandparents, the war that plagues their country changes their lives forever.
Blood must repay blood, and, in order to avenge their grandparents' deaths, one brother must offer the ultimate sacrifice. Years later, the surviving twin – now a student actor in a wintry Montreal – is given a role which forces him to confront the past. Tremblay, an actor and director himself, poses the difficult question: Can art ever adequately address suffering? Both current and timeless, written with the sharp purity of desert poetry, The Orange Grove depicts the haunting inheritance of war and its aftermath.

Larry Tremblay
Larry Tremblay is a writer, director, actor and specialist in Kathakali, an elaborate dance theatre form which he has studied on numerous trips to India. He has published twenty books as a playwright, poet, novelist and essayist.

The recent publication of Talking Bodies (Talonbooks, 2001) brought together four of his plays in English translation. He played the role of Léo in his own play Le Déclic du destin in many festivals in Brazil and Argentina. The play received a new production in Paris in 1999 and was highly successful at the Festival Off in Avignon in 2000.

Thanks to an uninterrupted succession of new plays (Anatomy Lesson, Ogre, The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi, Les Mains bleues and Téléroman, among others) in production during the 1990s, Tremblay’s work continues to achieve international recognition.

His plays, premiered for the most part in Montreal, have also been produced, often in translation, in Italy, France, Belgium, Mexico, Columbia, Brazil, Argentina and Scotland. In 2001, Le Ventriloque had three separate productions in Paris, Brussels and Montreal; it has since been translated into numerous languages.

More recently, Tremblay collaborated with Welsh Canadian composer John Metcalf on a new opera, A Chair in Love, a concert version of which premiered in Montreal in April 2005. One of Quebec’s most versatile writers, Tremblay currently teaches acting at l’École supérieure de théâtre de l’Université du Québec à Montréal.

Keith Turnbull
Keith Turnbull served as the artistic director of Theatre Arts programs at the Banff Centre for the Arts from 1993 to 1999 and was also the co-director of the Banff playRites Colony and director of the Contemporary Opera and Song Training Program from 1997 to 2000. His career as a director, producer, designer and dramaturge is highlighted by a commitment to contemporary and new work in both theatre and opera.

In addition, Turnbull has a particular interest in the pedagogy, performance practice and interpretation of the works of Shakespeare and of other language-based texts. He has directed more than seventy plays at various theatres throughout the world.

Turnbull also founded a First Nations theatre company from which emerged many of Canada’s most noted Native performers. He was the founding co-artistic director of the Toronto Theatre Festival and the president of the Toronto Theatre Alliance, as well as a board member of the Canadian Actors’ Equity Association. He has taught at the University of Manitoba, the National Theatre School, the University of Calgary and the Banff Centre for the Arts.

Larry Tremblay's profile page