Finalist for the 2011 Governor General's Literary Award in Drama

In a world where hilarity and heartbreak are next-door neighbours, minor complications inevitably arise. In this first collection of plays by Brendan Gall, including Wide Awake Hearts and A Quiet Place, these Minor Complications become groundbreakingly major.

In Wide Awake Hearts, four nameless friends – a writer, an actress, an actor and an editor – stumble through the nightmarish landscape of love and infidelity while trying to make a movie about those very things. Reality and fiction blur as all four try to tear everything apart, hoping to wake up to something better.

In A Quiet Place, two amnesiacs in a room with no door attempt to solve the puzzle of their own existence while trying not to kill each other or fall in love. A great reckoning in a little room, this play will take you from mystery to comedy to tragedy – all with just two men, one chair and a light bulb.

‘In Wide Awake Hearts, Brendan Gall deals with the complicated relationship between fiction and truth and, as always, he offers up razor-sharp insights. He’s got an uncanny ability to channel epic existential themes through his beautiful-loser characters, his style is ultra-contemporary and hip, and his comic timing is virtuosic.’ – Hannah Moscovitch

‘As one character puts it in Brendan Gall’s Wide Awake Hearts, “Nice people make dull drama.” Happily, niceness never intrudes in this witty, sexy new work by the multi-talented Gall.’

– NOW Magazine

Brendan Gall has written four plays (Wide Awake Hearts, Alias Godot, Panhandled, A Quiet Place). His work has been nominated for three Dora Mavor Moore awards and produced in Italy. He wrote the screenplay for the feature film Dakota, distributed by Mongrel Media. Brendan is one of the founders and artistic directors of creation company The Room, and is currently a playwright-in-residence at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre. He is also an actor.

Brendan Gall's profile page