Afterimage
By Robert Chafe and Michael Crummey
4.5/5
()
About this ebook
Robert Chafe
Robert Chafe is a writer, educator, actor, and arts administrator based in St. John’s, Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland). He has worked in theatre, dance, opera, radio, fiction, and film. His stage plays have been seen in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and in the United States, and include Oil and Water, Tempting Providence, Afterimage, Under Wraps, Between Breaths, Everybody Just C@lm the F#ck Down, and The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (adapted from the novel by Wayne Johnston). He has been shortlisted three times for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama and he won the award for Afterimage in 2010. He has been a guest instructor at Memorial University, Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, and the National Theatre School of Canada. In 2018 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Memorial University. He is the playwright and artistic director of Artistic Fraud.
Read more from Robert Chafe
The Colony of Unrequited Dreams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Between Breaths Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTwo-Man Tent Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oil and Water Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Under Wraps Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRobert Chafe: Two Plays: Butler's Marsh and Tempting Providence Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everybody Just C@lm the F#ck Down Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Afterimage
Related ebooks
Age of Minority: Three Solo Plays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPalace of the End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Shadow Factory (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWinter of 88 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMortified Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIt's a Wonderful Life (NHB Modern Plays): (stage version) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Girlfriend Experience (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSwitzerland (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsChristmas is Miles Away (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGas Girls Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTinderbox (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThat Almost Unnameable Lust (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPieces Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsValued Friends (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHere (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDaughter (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDeclarations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVitals Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNightwood Theatre: A Woman’s Work Is Always Done Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPost-Democracy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFor the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Jeremy Johnson: the Collected Plays Vol 2: Volume 2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFierce: Five Plays for High Schools Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCockroach (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFragile! (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThis Wide Night (NHB Modern Plays) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Patron Saint of Stanley Park Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPrairie Nurse Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings2016/17 Season Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Performing Arts For You
As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Midsummer Night's Dream, with line numbers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Becoming Free Indeed: My Story of Disentangling Faith from Fear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Yes Please Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Macbeth (new classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lucky Dog Lessons: From Renowned Expert Dog Trainer and Host of Lucky Dog: Reunions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Coreyography: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hamlet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unsheltered: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Robin Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Woman Is No Man: A Read with Jenna Pick Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Our Town: A Play in Three Acts Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Importance of Being Earnest: A Play Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life through the Power of Storytelling Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wuthering Heights Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Diamond Eye: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hollywood's Dark History: Silver Screen Scandals Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Whale / A Bright New Boise Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Best Women's Monologues from New Plays, 2020 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Romeo and Juliet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book: The Script Book Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Dolls House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Trial Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Dramatic Writing: Its Basis in the Creative Interpretation of Human Motives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Count Of Monte Cristo (Unabridged) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Afterimage
3 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Afterimage - Robert Chafe
Afterimage
Robert Chafe
Playwrights Canada Press
Toronto
Also by Robert Chafe
Robert Chafe: Two Plays
Butler’s Marsh and Tempting Providence
Afterimage © Copyright 2009 Robert Chafe
Introduction © Copyright 2010 Michael Crummey
Playwrights Canada Press
The Canadian Drama Publisher
202-269 Richmond Street West, Toronto, ON M5V 1X1
416.703.0013
info@playwrightscanada.com • www.playwrightscanada.com
No part of this book, covered by the copyright herein, may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for excerpts in a review or by a licence from:
Access Copyright
1 Yonge St., Suite 800, Toronto, ON M5E 1E5
phone 416.868.1620
For professional or amateur production rights, please contact:
Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland
PO Box 23193, Churchill Square
St. John’s, NL A1B 4J9
artisticfraud@nf.sympatico.ca
Cover image of Melanie Caines by Justin Hall, courtesy of Artistic Fraud.
Cover design by Blake Sproule.
Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada.
ISBN: 978-0-88754-948-9
Also available in print and PDF formats.
Logo: Government of CanadaLogo: Canada Council for the Arts. Logo du Conseil des Arts du Canada.Logo: Ontario Arts Council, an Ontario government agency. Logo: Conseil des Arts de L’Ontario, un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario.Logo: Ontario Media Development CorporationPlaywrights Canada Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and of the Province of Ontario through the Ontario Arts Council and the Ontario Media Development Corporation for our publishing activities.
For Michelle
I expect that Afterimage would never have come into being if not for the fact that Jillian Keiley (founder of one of the country’s most innovative and fearless theatre companies, Artistic Fraud) is terrified of flying.
Jill and I first met at the Labrador Creative Arts Festival in Happy Valley-Goose Bay in 1998. The week-long event invites professional artists in all disciplines to run workshops with school kids from across Labrador. The night before she flew back to St. John’s, Jill was already stressed about the thought of getting on the plane. I gave her a copy of my second book, Hard Light, a collection of stories and poems about outport Newfoundland. This will keep your mind off it, I told her. I meant it as a joke, but Jill claims she read the whole way home and never gave a thought to the imminent crash that usually occupies her time during a flight.
A few months later she contacted me to suggest adapting parts of the book for the stage. Eventually Salvage: The Story of a House went up in an old merchant residence in St. John’s, the audience moving from room to room in groups of eight to hear a series of three-minute monologues. Each small group carried a map that told them which room to move to next, a hundred people jigsawing through the narrow hallways, the actors on the move between pieces as well. Everyone saw the same show, but each in a different order.
I remember thinking, when Jill first described this Rubik’s Cube of an idea to me, that there was no way to make the logistical nightmare work. I was wrong, of course. And as I’ve learned from that experience and my subsequent run-ins with Artistic Fraud, Jill’s mind operates in a realm completely different than my own.
* * *
When Jill and Robert Chafe invited me out to lunch three or four years ago, I was expecting the unexpected. Several times after the Salvage show Jill had mentioned that she might be interested in adapting Afterimage
for the stage. Fill your boots, I told her, though privately I thought it was a ridiculous notion and would never happen.
The story is part of Flesh and Blood, a collection set in a fictional mining town that is remarkably similar to the place where I was born and raised in central Newfoundland. I have only the vaguest recollection of how the story came to me and how it took shape, but there were a number of real-life anecdotes at the root of it: a French woman who worked at the hospital in