Featuring
David Fennario
Presented by Sally Nelson
with Guest Appearance by Charlie Chaplin
Playwright David Fennario was born in Montreal, Quebec, 1947. He was raised in the working class district of Pointe-St-Charles/Verdun, an area he would make the centre of most of his plays. He was one of six children, his father was a housepainter. His pen name, given to him by a girlfriend, was part of a Bob Dylan song, "Pretty Peggy-O."
Fennario worked in a number of small jobs (ie: a warehouse, which he depicts in his play On The Job) before he enrolled in Dawson College and was encouraged by teacher Sally Nelson to publish his journal - Without a Parachute (eventually adapted as a play in 1978 and directed by Gaëtan Charlebois). The journal was seen by Centaur Theatre artistic director Maurice Podbrey who brought Fennario to Centaur to see how a theatre works.
Fennario's first play, On the Job , would be produced at Centaur in 1975 and became an immediate success. His subsequent plays - Nothing to Lose (1976), Toronto (1978), Balconville (1979), Moving (1983), The Murder of Catherine Parr (1986) - would all be produced at Centaur to huge success, some touring across the province and nationally and, in Balconville's case, internationally (this play would also be produced for television). Fennario wrote another work for Centaur, the controversial The Death of René Lévesque (1990) that was lambasted by some critics, particularly the Montreal Devoir critic, Robert Lévesque , who levelled charges of anti-Quebec racism at the writer.
Fennario in his heyday was a darling of the Montreal anglophone scene even while he maintained his Marxist politics and continued to work to bring the problems of the working class to public attention. The tears in his relationship with theatre professionals began to show when he picketed the Place des Arts revival of Balconville in sympathy with the union ushers of the hall.
He eventually broke away from mainstream theatre to work in community theatre. His agitprop work Joe Beef was produced by the Blackrock Community Group, which he co-founded in Verdun. He has also written and performed in one-man shows: Banana Boots is about his life in the theatre; Gargoyles tells the history of his beloved Point St. Charles from a workingclass point of view.
Although he has said that he considers all of his plays which premiered at Centaur Theatre "political and artistic failures," he returned to the Centaur in November 2005 for the premiere of Condoville, which revisits the characters in Balconville 26 years later, when the pressures of an upwardly mobile marketplace in Montreal are threatening to dislodge them from their tenement – now renovated as a condo Co-op. The language difficulties of the past are now replaced by worries about the rising cost of real estate, and conflicts with two new tenants, a gay couple, one of whom is from the Congo. As in the earlier play, the characters speak in colloquial French (joual) and English, and the dialogue is peppered with witty one-liners and expletives.
His recent play, Fessenden's Follies was adapted for radio and performed before a live audience for local community radio stations. It was broadcast December 23 and 24 on 37 community radio stations in Canada, the US and in Scotland. It commemorates the 100th anniversary of the invention of radio by Canadian Reginald Fessenden in 1906. Fessenden (born in the Eastern Townships, Quebec in 1866) is also credited with inventing the radio compass, the sonic depth finder, as well as an array of warship and submarine gadgets. Fassenden’s Follies is in production as a film and stage play.
Bolsheviki is his most recently performed work, staged in both Toronto an Montreal in fall 2007.
Fennario has won the Chalmers Award twice (On the Job 1976 and Balconville 1979), and received the Prix Pauline Julien from the United Steelworkers' Union for Joe Beef in 1986.
Source: Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia
Films
CITY BELOW THE HILL (Green Lion Productions - CFCF TV 1997)
BANANA BOOTS (NFB - Bravo! 1997)
Performance film featuring David Fennario.
FENNARIO - HIS WORLD ON STAGE (NFB - Bravo! 1996)