Michael Cook (playwright)

Michael Cook (14 February 1933 – 2 July 1994) was an English-born Canadian playwright known for his plays set in Newfoundland.^[1][2]

Michael Cook
Born	(1933-02-14)14 February 1933 Fulham, London, England
Died	2 July 1994(1994-07-02) (aged 61) St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada
Occupation	Theatre reviewer and playwright
Period	1966 - 1987

Early life

Cook was born in Fulham, London, England to Anglo-Irish parents. He attended boarding schools until age fifteen and joined the British Army in 1949.^[3] He served for twelve years, mostly in Asia, including Japan where he saw the Ama (Japanese female free-divers) harvesting shellfish, sea urchins, pearls, etc., from the ocean.^{[citation needed]} He married Muriel Horner in 1951 and had eight children. Between 1962 and 1966, he attended the University of Nottingham, earning teaching qualifications.^[2][4]

Career

After graduating in 1966, Cook left his family and moved to Newfoundland to work as a schoolteacher. In 1967, he began his career at Memorial University of Newfoundland, first as a drama specialist with the MUN Extension Service and later becoming an associate professor in the English department.^[5] Soon after arriving in Newfoundland, he wrote scripts for several radio dramas which were produced in St. John's.^[6] He also reviewed plays and wrote articles about the importance of theatre in the St. John's Evening Telegram and the Canadian Theatrical Review.^[7]

In 1970, Cook formed the amateur theatre company The Open Group with Clyde Rose and Richard Buehler and began to write plays for this group.^[8] He wrote a number of plays set in Newfoundland, beginning with Tiln, written in 1971.^[9] His best-known works are Jacob's Wake and The Head, Guts and Soundbone Dance, in which Newfoundland provides a sometimes realistic and sometimes symbolic backdrop for his poetic rendering of lives in continual conflict with natural elements.^[10] Many of Cook's plays include dialogue written in Newfoundland English.^[11]

In the mid-1970s, Cook began to spend time on Random Island and Fogo Island, marrying Madonna Decker in 1973.^[12] In 1977, he was playwright-in-residence in the Banff Playwrights Lab at the Banff Centre for the Arts.^[13] From 1982, they lived in Stratford, Ontario, where he was playwright-in-residence in 1987. He would often spend his summers on Random Island.^[5]

In 1994, while making his way to his summer home on Random Island after visiting St. John's to see a staging of The Head, Guts and Soundbone Dance, Cook became ill and died back in St. John's.^[14][5]

His plays have been performed throughout North America, as well Poland, Sweden, Germany, Hungary, the United Kingdom and Ireland.^[15]

Personal life

Cook married three times, and fathered fourteen children, including actor Sebastian Spence by his second wife, Janis Spence, to whom he was married 1967–73.^[16][2]

Works

Stage plays

• The J. Alfred Prufrock Hour (performed 1968)
• Tiln (first broadcast 1971; performed 1972)
• Colour the Flesh the Colour of Dust (performed 1971; published by Simon and Pierre, 1974)
• The Head, Guts and Soundbone Dance (performed at Arts and Culture Centre, St. John's, 1973; published 1974)
• Jacob's Wake (performed at Arts and Culture Centre, St. John's, 1974; published by Talonbooks, 1975)
• Quiller (performed 1975)
• The Fisherman's Revenge (performed 1976; published by Playwrights Canada, 1985)^[17]
• Therese's Creed (performed at Centaur Theatre, Montreal, 1977). Title also variously spelled as "Terese" and "Theresa".
• Not as a Dream (performed at Dalhousie University, Halifax, 1976)
• On the Rim of the Curve (performed at Newfoundland Drama Festival, 1977)
• The Gayden Chronicles (performed 1978; published by Playwrights Canada, 1979)
• The Apocalypse Sonata (performed at Globe Theatre, Regina, 1980)
• The End of the Road (written 1981). Earlier drafts were titled All the Funny People Are Dead and The Deserts of Bohemia.
• The Great Harvest Excursion (written 1986; published 1994)^[18]

Compilations

• Quiller / Tiln: Two One-Act Plays (Playwrights Co-op, 1975)
• Tiln & Other Plays (Talonbooks, 1976). Includes Tiln, Quiller and Therese's Creed.^[19]
• Three Plays (Breakwater Books, 1977). Includes The Head, Guts and Soundbone Dance; On the Rim of the Curve; and Therese's Creed.

Radio plays

• No Man Can Serve Two Masters, first broadcast April 8, 1966
• How to Catch a Pirate, first broadcast June 8, 1966
• A Walk in the Rain, first broadcast January 18, 1967
• Or the Wheel Broken, first broadcast June 18, 1967
• A Time for Doors, first broadcast March 13, 1968
• The Truck, first broadcast August 18, 1968
• The Concubine, first broadcast February 16, 1969
• To Inhabit the Earth Is Not Enough, first broadcast September 21, 1969
• The Ballad of Patrick Docker, first broadcast November 25, 1970
• Journey into the Unknown, 1970
• There's a Seal in the Bottom of the Garden, first broadcast June 19, 1971
• Love Is a Walnut, first broadcast August 20, 1972
• Apostles for the Burning, first broadcast December 4, 1973
• Travels with Aunt Jane, 12 episodes broadcast weekly starting July 10, 1974 starring Jane Mallett
• Knight of Sorrow, Lady of Darkness, first broadcast August 10, 1976
• The Producer, the Director, 1976
• Ireland's Eye, first broadcast April 19, 1977
• The Gentleman Amateur, 1977
• The Hunter, 1981
• All a Pack o' Lies, 1981
• The Terrible Journey of Frederick Dunglass, first broadcast January 22, 1982
• The Preacher, first broadcast December 12, 1982
• The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone, first broadcast June 3, 1984
• This Damned Inheritance, first broadcast November 11, 1984
• The Bailiff and the Women, first broadcast November 16, 1984
• The Ocean Ranger, first broadcast March 31, 1985
• The Saddest Barn Dance Ever Held, first broadcast April 28, 1985
• The Hanging Judge, first broadcast October 27, 1985
• The Moribundian Memorandum, 1986

Other

• In Search of Confederation, 1971, television play
• "The Island of Fire: Chapter One of a Novel in Progress". Aurora: New Canadian Writinq 1980. Ed. Morris Wolfe. Toronto: Doubleday, 1980, pp. 33–48.

Further reading

• Craig Walker, "Michael Cook: Elegy, Allegory and Eschatology," The Buried Astrolabe: Canadian Dramatic Imagination and Western Tradition. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001.