Cape Breton-born playwright Daniel McIvor was two days into a 10-day silent retreat when he made a breakthrough with the script for A Beautiful View, which starts at Neptune’s Studio Theatre this week.
“It all exploded in my head, how it should be, but I wasn’t allowed to speak and I wasn’t allowed to write,” he said yesterday. “I basically ruined the entire retreat for myself, because the whole time, I was holding this story in my head. When it was finished, I dashed out and wrote the whole thing in my car in the parking lot.”
The story is about Liz (Jackie Torrens) and Mandy (Kathryn MacLellan), two people evolving through a 20-year relationship that defies definition.
“There doesn’t seem to be a label that actually fits it,” said Torrens. It’s a friendship, “but it incorporates elements that one doesn’t traditionally see as part of just a friendship. It’s that person in your life that is more than just a friend, even more than family.”
McIvor captures the “female voice” by going deeper and capturing the human voice, she said.
It’s McIvor-mania in Halifax, as his Confession plays at the Bus Stop Theatre at 8 p.m. Monday night.
“It’s a woman looking back on her life on her dying night,” said Mulgrave Road Theatre director Ann-Marie Kerr. “It’s intensely hopefully in light of some difficult subject matter.”
“The play knows more than I do. If I could live the philosophy of my plays, I’d live a very good, healthy, wonderful, clear life,” McIvor joked.
Getting tickets
A Beautiful View officially opens at Neptune’s Studio Theatre Friday and will run until Oct. 31. Go to www.Neptunetheatre.com or call 429-7070 for tickets. For Confession, call 533-2092.
