MacIvor, Daniel

Daniel MacIvor, playwright, actor, film director, screenwriter (b at Sydney, Nova Scotia 23 July 1962). Daniel MacIvor is one of Canada's most innovative playwrights and yet his work is so broadly appealing that it has enjoyed a degree of popular success far beyond the range usually associated with so-called "experimental" theatre. Part of this success is undoubtedly attributable to MacIvor's skill and charm as a performer of his own work, for he has toured widely in productions of his own plays. He has become a favourite performer at many international theatre festivals, setting a dauntingly high standard for those who subsequently have attempted to produce his idiosyncratic work.

Keywords

Actors, Theatre

Born in 1962

Playwrights

Daniel MacIvor received his post-secondary education in theatre at Dalhousie University in Halifax (1980-83) and spent a year at George Brown College in Toronto (1984-85). It was during this time that he first encountered the writers whom he cites as important influences on the development of his own work, including Canadian playwrights David Freeman, David FRENCH and Judith THOMPSON and Americans Irene Maria Fornes and David Mamet, all of whom manage in their plays to explore uncomfortable truths about human nature in an unflinching but humorous manner, and to write dialogue that makes a sort of poetry out of the idiosyncratic rhythms of particular speech patterns. Following their lead, MacIvor has turned his actor's gift for mimicry into an ability as a writer to render a variety of voices vividly and effectively. This process is particularly evident in MacIvor's one-actor plays, such as Wild Abandon, House, Here Lies Henry, Monster and Cul-de-sac. Another important early inspiration claimed by MacIvor is the Montréal-based company Théâtre Ubu, led by artistic director Denis Marleau, whose musical approach to theatrical language and action has clearly influenced MacIvor's work in plays such as Never Swim Alone and 2-2 Tango. MacIvor uses language rhythmically in these plays and elsewhere both to build tension and to render and satirize habits of thought that approach the level of social obsessive-compulsive disorders.

Daniel MacIvor's breakthrough as a playwright came with See Bob Run (1986), a one-woman play written for actor Caroline Gillis. In 1987 MacIvor was invited to join the Playwrights' Unit at the TARRAGON THEATRE, through which he developed his play Somewhere I Have Never Travelled, which received a full production at the Tarragon in 1988.

Since then, most of Daniel MacIvor's work was first produced through his own company, da da kamera, which he founded for the production of See Bob Run in 1986 and which he closed in 2007, following a triumphant season in which the company remounted 4 of his plays - Here Lies Henry, Monster, House and A Beautiful View - at BUDDIES IN BAD TIMES THEATRE in Toronto. The record of MacIvor plays produced by da da kamera in the intervening 20 years is as noted for its range and consistent quality as it is for MacIvor's prolificness. Some of the highlights include Never Swim Alone (1991), one of MacIvor's most produced plays, in which the mutual aggression and ruthless competitiveness of 2 heterosexual businessmen is channelled through a bizarre contest moderated by a girl whom the men had met one summer when they were teenagers; 4 one-man shows created with frequent collaborator director-playwright Daniel Brooks, including House (1992), Here Lies Henry (1995), Monster (1998) and Cul-de-sac (2002); the last new play to be produced by da da kamera, A Beautiful View (2006), which examines the love relationship of 2 women from their twenties into their forties as they unite and then drift apart; and His Greatness (2008), which is about 2 days late in the life of American playwright Tennessee Williams.

The closure of da da kamera in 2007 has resulted in fewer touring appearances by MacIvor in his own work, although he has turned his talents toward plays embraced by theatres lying beyond the avant-garde and festival circuits in which his work has most often been seen. The most striking example of this is MacIvor's most popular play, Marion Bridge (1998). Structured more conventionally than his other work, it is focused on 3 sisters reunited by their mother's imminent death.

Alongside his work as a playwright, MacIvor is an admired and sought-after actor, appearing at theatres such as DNA Theatre, THEATRE CALGARY and Tarragon Theatre and in a number of film and television projects written and directed by others, such as David Wellington's I Love a Man in Uniform (1993), Thom Fitzgerald's Beefcake (1998), Don MCKELLAR and Bruce MCDONALD's television series Twitch City, and Jeremey Podeswa's The Five Senses, for which he was nominated for a GENIE Award as best actor.

In 1989-90 MacIvor attended the CANADIAN FILM CENTRE and emerged as both a screenwriter and a film director. Screenplays that MacIvor has given others to direct include 2 adaptations of his own plays House (1996) and Marion Bridge (2002); and Whole New Thing (2005), directed by Amnon Buchbinder, a film about a precociously intelligent boy who develops a crush on his English teacher (played by MacIvor), a gay man whose career is suddenly jeopardized by the boy's attentions. MacIvor has worked as a writer-director-actor for several films, including Past Perfect (2002), in which he and Rebecca JENKINS play a couple who meet on a cross-Canada flight, their future relationship told in an unusual structure of flash-forwards to a day 2 years hence; and Wilby Wonderful (2004), which features an ensemble cast of Canada's best-known film actors in roles MacIvor wrote especially for each of them, and which follows the lives of a group of characters in a small island town over the course of a single day.

Daniel MacIvor has been nominated 6 times for the Chalmers Award for best new Canadian play, winning it twice; he has been nominated 5 times for the Governor General's Award for (published) drama, winning it in 2006; he was winner of the 2008 Siminovitch Prize in theatre (playwright); he has also won several Dora Mavor Moore Awards, an Edinburgh Fringe First Award and a Village Voice OBIE Award (for the New York production of In On It in 2001).

MacIvor, Daniel
Award-winning playwright, actor and film director Daniel MacIvor (photo by Guntar Kravis).

Author CRAIG WALKER

Links to Other Sites

Daniel MacIvor
A profile of Daniel MacIvor, actor, playwright, and director. From the Encyclopedia of Canadian Theatre.

MacIvor's Lively Ghosts
A review of “I Still Love You: Five Plays,” an award-winning collection of plays by playwright-actor Daniel MacIvor. From the Books in Canada website.

Daniel MacIvor wins $25,000 Banff playwriting commission
A CBC News story about playwright Daniel MacIvor receiving a major playwriting commission receiving a playwriting commission from the Banff Centre.

Playwright Daniel MacIvor wins $100,000 Siminovitch Prize
A CBC News article about the awarding of the Siminovitch Prize to acclaimed Canadian playwright Daniel MacIvor. Check this site for additional news about MacIvor.

A Beautiful View is a new look for playwright Daniel MacIvor
An article about award-winning playwright Daniel MacIvor. From the vancouversun.com website.