Dividing Lines | Líneas Divisorias

By Beatriz Pizano

• First produced by Aluna Theatre at the Theatre Centre, Toronto, in November 2019.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Playwrights Canada Press
• Release date: Dec 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9780369103802

Beatriz Pizano

Beatriz Pizano is a playwright, director, actor, dramaturge, and the founder and artistic director of Aluna Theatre, a company that creates daring, experimental, and political theatre from a TransAmerican perspective. Beatriz has received numerous awards and nominations for her plays and was the first Latinx woman to be recognized with a Dora Mavor Moore Award and a Toronto Theatre Critics’ Award for her acting in Blood Wedding. She is the author of numerous award-winning plays including a trilogy about women and war that includes For Sale, Madre, and La Comunion. She has also written a play for young audiences, La Maleta, that has been produced by Roseneath Theatre several times and has toured the USA and Ontario. Beatriz’s writing challenges Eurocentric approaches to theatre creation. She is a fierce activist who creates spaces and opportunities for racialized artists and playwrights and was recognized in 2019 as one of TD’s Most Influential Hispanics in Canada. She was the senior playwright at Banff’s Playwrights Lab in 2019.  She lives in Toronto.

Book preview

Cover: Dividing Lines | Líneas Divisorias by Beatriz Pizano. The cover is divided into an upper and lower section, with the upper featuring a podium covered with photos, lit by three desktop lamps. The lower half is of a sepia-toned photograph of a woman in water, smiling at the camera.

Dividing Lines | Líneas Divisorias

Beatriz Pizano

Playwrights Canada Press

Toronto

Dividing Lines | Líneas Divisorias © Copyright 2022 by Beatriz Pizano

First edition: December 2022

Printed and bound in Canada by Rapido Books, Montreal

Top front jacket photo © Jeremy Mimnagh

Interior photos for Prologue, Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, Episode 6, Episode 7, Episode 10, Episode 11, Episode 12, Episode 13, Episode 15, Episode 19, and Episode 21 © Jeremy Mimnagh

Interior photos for Episode 5, Episode 8, Episode 9, Episode 14, Episode 16, Episode 17, Episode 18, and Episode 20 © Trevor Schwellnus

Playwrights Canada Press

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No part of this book may be reproduced, downloaded, or used in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, except for excerpts in a review or by a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca.

For professional or amateur production rights, please contact Playwrights Canada Press.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Dividing lines = Líneas Divisorias / Beatriz Pizano.

Names: Pizano, Beatriz, author.

Description: A play.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220279829 | Canadiana (ebook) 2022027987

X

|

ISBN

9780369103796 (softcover) |

ISBN

9780369103819 (

PDF

) |

ISBN

9780369103802 (

HTML

)

Classification:

LCC PS

8631.

I

93

D

58 2022 |

DDC C

812/.6—dc23

Playwrights Canada Press operates on land which is the ancestral home of the Anishinaabe Nations (Ojibwe / Chippewa, Odawa, Potawatomi, Algonquin, Saulteaux, Nipissing, and Mississauga), the Wendat, and the members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora), as well as Metis and Inuit peoples. It always was and always will be Indigenous land.

We acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council (

OAC

), Ontario Creates, and the Government of Canada for our publishing activities.

Logo: Canada Council for the Arts.Logo: Government of Canada.Logo: Ontario Creates.Logo: Ontario Arts Council.

To Trevor Schwellnus, who held my mother’s hand and mine on stage and off. Marce, mi ángel. Vicky and Caliche, my heart. Y Julia, por siempre y para siempre.

Playwright’s Notes

This is a journey of love—its possibilities . . . and impossibilities. The story is based on truths, many of them personal, remembered over time. My desire with this sharing is to look at death with respect, compassion, and without fear. To honour life . . . and our choices. We don’t exist in isolation. We are watersheds connected by histories and experiences.

How do you make a decision about dying for someone who can no longer make it for themselves? For someone you love? These decisions are extremely