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News Release

June 09, 2006

Prof Nominated for Major Theatre Award

University of Guelph drama professor Judith Thompson has been nominated for a Dora Mavor Moore Award for her play Enoch Arden. The awards ceremony will be held June 26 at the Winter Garden Theatre in Toronto.

Thompson, a faculty member in the School of English and Theatre Studies since 1992, was nominated in the independent theatre division in the outstanding new play or musical category. The list of nominees was announced this week.

Enoch Arden is a melodrama based loosely on a work by German composer Richard Strauss, who, in 1898, set the narrative poem “Enoch Arden” by Alfred Lord Tennyson to piano accompaniment.

Thompson’s adaptation, which also features both music and text, is set in a Parkdale halfway house and centres on two emotionally disturbed inmates. It was named a “Top 10" show by Now magazine in 2004.

“Judith Thompson continues to intrigue us with her compelling and fresh take on theatre,” said Jacqueline Murray, dean of the College of Arts. “She is one of Canada’s leading playwrights and an icon of Canadian theatre. We are lucky to have a playwright of her stature on our faculty to inspire our students.”

Thomspon has received wide acclaim for her work and is known for her complex and sometimes disturbing plays that give voice to human failings and accomplishments. She is a two-time winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for Drama for The Other Side of the Dark (1989) and White Biting Dog (1984), and was nominated for a Genie Award twice for her screenplays Perfect Pie and Lost and Delirious. She also received the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award for Lion in the Streets (1991) and I Am Yours (1987).

In 2005 she was named an officer of the Order of Canada, considered the country’s highest honour of lifetime achievement, for her outstanding contributions in arts and writing. She holds an honorary doctorate of sacred letters from Thorneloe University for her work as a playwright.

The Dora Mavor Moore Awards honour the creators of more than 200 theatre, dance and opera productions annually in five major categories. They are named for Mavor Moore, a teacher and director who helped establish Canadian professional theatre in the 1930s and 1940s.