Down Dangerous Passes Road

Fifteen years to the day after the death of their father, three brothers get together and drive out to the place where it happened: an old fishing spot on the river down Dangerous Passes Road. Each sibling is facing a crucial rite of passage: Carl, the youngest, is to be married later in the day and it is this occasion that has brought the three of them together. Ambrose is losing his lover to AIDS. Victor, the eldest, has just left his second failed marriage.

They have never really spoken with each other because they all have their own individual secrets to hide and because they share an ambivalence about the death of their father. Could they have prevented it? Would they have wanted to save the town drunk, dreamer, poet, fisherman, the man who embarrassed them in front of their friends and locked them in the sentimental prison of his poems? Are they ready, finally, to reveal themselves to each other and move on with their lives? Can they survive this unsparing encounter with their own manhood?

In voices that interweave, alternate and play off one another with the exquisite lyricism of chamber music, the brothers reveal themselves as trapped by their father's inability to let his boys grow up and their own inability to accept him as an adult.

Cast of three men.
About the Author: Quebec playwright Michel Marc Bouchard made his professional debut in 1985. Since then he has written 25 plays, and he is the recipient of numerous awards including, in June 2012, the prestigious National Order of Quebec for his contribution to Quebec culture, and, in 2005, the Order of Canada. He has also received le Prix Journal de Montréal, Prix du Cercle de critiques de l'Outaouais, the Governor General's Award, the Dora Mavor Moore Award, and the Chalmers Award for Outstanding New Play. The Vancouver productions of Lilies (1993) and The Orphan Muses (1995) also garnered nine Jesse Richardson Theatre Awards.

Translated into nine languages, Bouchard's bold and visionary works have represented Canada in major festivals around the world and been produced by theatres on four continents. Though the subjects of his plays are often serious, Bouchard is no stranger to comedy. Several of his plays like Les entreprises amoureuses, Le Désir and Pierre et Marie, have been mounted at summer theatres in French and English. Bouchard is also the author of Written on Water, Down Dangerous Passes Road, The Coronation Voyage, which was performed in 2003 as the first Canadian-authored play at the Shaw Festival in 25 years, The Tale of Teeka, and The Madonna Painter, all available in English from Talonbooks.

Linda Gaboriau is an award-winning literary translator based in Montreal. Her translations of plays by Quebec's most prominent playwrights have been published and -produced across Canada and abroad. In her work as a -literary manager and dramaturge, she has directed -numerous translation residencies and international exchange projects. She was the founding director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre. Most recently she won the 2010 Governor General's Award for Forests, her translation of the play by Wajdi Mouawad.