It’s 1606 and Europe is at war over God. At the behest of the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II, Venice’s four strongest men are charged with transporting a holy painting — Albrecht Dürer's The Brotherhood of the Rosary — across the Alps to Prague. In the small Alpine village of Pusterwald, they are set upon by Protestant zealots; their escape is attributed to a miracle. The strongmen and their captain are summoned to an inquiry, led by the magistrate of Venice and the cardinal archbishop of Milan, to determine whether something divine did indeed occur. Each man's recounting adds a layer of colour to the canvas. Through this vividly painted mystery, inspired by true events, Sean Dixon challenges the role of faith at the dawn of the Age of Reason. Sean Dixon is a playwright, novelist, and actor. His plays are collected in AWOL: Three Plays for Theatre SKAM. Sean's novels are The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal and The Many Revenges of Kip Flynn.
It was love at first scene: the West Coast's innovative Theatre SKAM and Sean Dixon were a match made in heaven. AWOL offers up for the first time three of the fruits of their three-year-and-counting union. In Aerwacol, a couple flees personal tragedy on a manual railroad car headed across the prairies, meeting odd characters along the way. Billy Nothin' is an existentialist cowboy play inwhich horse trainer Billy None loses the 'cowboy way' so entirely that his best friends don't even recognize him any more. And dystopian romance District of Centuries tells the story of a suburban type seeking his long-lost brother in a downtown housing project designed to crumble so fast that inhabitants come to believe they're hundreds of years old.
Praise for Sean Dixon: “Energetic. . . . Full of sound and fury.”—Kirkus Review “Reminiscent of the kind of irrepressibly mischievous and literary novels that John Barth used to write. Call it populist poindexterism.”—Quill & Quire It all started with a black rose and a rich young man. And a house with a creek running through it. And then there she was, Kip Flynn, standing beside her boyfriend's dead body and agreeing to take a large sum of money from the young man's father to keep quiet. As if she could have done anything else, being so scared and grief-stricken and maybe pregnant. But that's not the end of it. You see, there's some kind of connection between Kip and this rich developer's son that keeps them tight in one another's orbit. So when Kip awakens from her grief, intent on revenge, they find themselves pursuing one another with a ferocity they can barely understand, one that spirals outward, with subway accidents and arson and drainpipes and backhoe wars, to envelop roommates, two guilty fathers, a window-cleaner or two, landlords, family secrets, a Vietnamese gangster, a stand-up bass player and an activist tour guide. And concluding in the subterranean heart of Toronto itself, which, like Kip, is torn between vengefulness and growth. Sean Dixon is a novelist, playwright, and banjo player. He's the author of the novel The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal; two novels for young readers, The Feathered Cloak and The Winter Drey; and several plays, including those collected in AWOL: Three Plays for Theatre SKAM.
The girls of the Lacuna Cabal Montreal Young Women’s Book Club are at a crossroads. One of their founding members is dead, they’ve made a few unfortunate compromises to their membership, some of them aren’t getting any younger, and they’ve been stuck on a single weepy tome for six long months. Resident maverick Runner Coghill decides to shake things up by introducing a cherished family heirloom to the group — ten pristine stone tablets, carved in cuneiform, telling the oldest story in the world: The Epic of Gilgamesh. Because their new book is written in an ancient language, the group must take the unprecedented step of allowing Runner to translate the whole story for them. But Runner’s narration is not of a common vein. Before they know it, the Cabalists have been thrust out to sea, on a journey in search of answers that extends halfway across the world to the war-torn land of this oldest story’s birth. The Last Days of the Lacuna Cabal is an offbeat rites-of-passage novel whose characters live out literature with ferocity and passion. It is a funny, quixotic debut that follows the members of a shallow, squabbling, time-wasting, protracted-adolescent book club as they find themselves transformed through the alchemy of the storyteller’s art.
The Lacuna Cabal Montreal Young Women's Book Club is not content simply to read and discuss books. Their process is a little more involved. They once kidnapped Irving Layton and took him for an excursion up a mountain. They attempted to recreate a scene of a nun swinging from a bridge-builder's broken arm in Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion . But when they begin to re-enact the Epic of Gilgamesh , in the early daysof the Iraq War, the book begins to enact them instead, sending the Cabalists across the globe and driving the narrators out of their own tale. Cross-dressing Aline becomes obsessed with the Baghdad Blogger, Anna with dabbling in prostitution, Missy with the ticking of her biological clock, Romy with Emmy, and the striped (yes, striped!) Emmy with the maker of the fitzbot, an ambulatory artificial-intelligence experiment. In the centre of it all are Runner Coghill and her little brother Neil, who are still mourning their sister and who brought to the group the ten priceless cuneiform Gilgamesh stones. Underlying it all is the tale of telling the tale, the convolutedness and self-consciousness of our delighted narrators, Jennifer and Danielle, as they reconstruct the tangled story - with more than their fair share of asides - to bring us a novel that is cryptographically charming and eruditely engrossing. The Girls Who Saw Everything presents a bizarre book club like no other, and a story so delightfully allusive to literature that it may very well become a book club favourit itself - though only among the slightly strange. 'A sort of Tristram Shandy for the twenty-first century, Sean Dixon's first novel is an intellectual, sexual, logorrheic, bibliophilic, cryptological, political and archeological rant of the first order. It'll change your idea of what "written in stone" means, and it'll blow your mind too.' - Michael Redhill ( Consolation, Martin Sloane )
A family tree assignment leads an adopted girl to discover the different ways to be a family. When her teacher gives her class a simple family tree assignment, Ada is stumped. How can she make her family fit into this simple template? Ada is adopted. She can see where to put her parents on the tree, but what about her birth mom? Ada has a biological sister, but her sister has different adoptive parents — where do they go on the tree? But with the help of her friends and family, Ada figures it out. She creates her family tree . . . and so much more. Loosely based on the author's own experience, this moving story explores the different ways families are created and how the modern family is more diverse and welcoming than ever before.
The South Seas charts the idea of the South Seas in popular cultural productions of the English-speaking world, from the beginnings of the Western enterprise in the Pacific until the eve of the Pacific War. Building on the notion that the influences on the creation of a text, and the ways in which its audience receives the text, are essential for understanding the historical significance of particular productions, Sean Brawley and Chris Dixon explore the ways in which authors’ and producers’ ideas about the South Seas were “haunted” by others who had written on the subject, and how they in turn influenced future generations of knowledge producers. The South Seas is unique in its examination of an array of cultural texts. Along with the foundational literary texts that established and perpetuated the South Seas tradition in written form, the authorsexplore diverse cultural forms such as art, music, theater, film, fairs, platform speakers, surfing culture, and tourism.
This book explores the expectations, experiences, and reactions of Allied servicemen and women who served in the wartime Pacific and viewed the South Pacific through the lens of Hollywood's South Seas. Based on extensive archival research, it explores the intersections between military experiences and cultural history.
Creating Solo Performance is an innovative toolbox of exercises and challenges focused on providing you – the performer – with engaging and inspiring ways to explore and develop your idea both on the page and in the performance space. The creation of a solo show may be the most rewarding, liberating and stressful challenge you will take on in your career. This book acts as your silent collaborator as you develop your performance, by helpfully arranging exercises under the following headings: Beginnings Creating character Generating material Using your performance space Technology Endings Collaboration Exercises can be explored in sequence, at random or according to your specific needs and interests as a performer. By enabling you to create a bespoke formula that best applies to your specific subject, area of interest, style and discipline, this book will become an indispensable resource as you produce your solo show.
Marx held that the progression of society from capitalism to communism was 'historically inevitable'. In Russia in 1917, it seemed that Marx's theory was being born out in reality. But was the Russian Revolution really inevitable? This collection of fourteen contributions from the world's leading Russian scholars attempts to answer the question by looking back at the key turning points of the revolution. From the Russo-Japanese conflict of 1904-5 through to the appropriation of church property in 1922, and focusing especially on the incredible chain of events in 1917 leading to the October Revolution itself, Historically Inevitable? is a forensic account of Russia's road to revolution. Each contribution gives not only a fast-paced, incisive narrative account of an individual aspect of Revolution but also, for the first time, an intriguing counter-factual analysis of what might have gone differently. Featuring Richard Pipes on the Kornilov affair, Orlando Figes on the October Revolution, Dominic Lieven on foreign intervention and Martin Sixsmith on the attempted assassination of Lenin in 1918, Historically Inevitable? explains how each of these moments, more through blind luck than any historical inevitability, led to the creation of the world's first communist state. Tony Brenton's afterword to the volume draws parallels between the Revolution and the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and places the events of 1917 in the context of more recent events in Russia and the Crimea. Featuring contributions from: Donald Crawford - Sean McMeekin - Dominic Lieven - Orlando Figes - Richard Sakwa - Douglas Smith - Martin Sixsmith - Simon Dixon - Boris Kolonitsky - Richard Pipes - Edvard Radzinsky - Catriona Kelly - Erik Landis - Evan Mawdsley
Alesha Dixon has one of the most incredible stories of any star, yet she remains an enigma. Behind the fabulous smile and signature laugh is a private woman whose childhood was blighted by domestic violence, poverty and a lack of confidence. As a beautiful young woman, she has struggled to overcome professional failure and the devastating effect of her husband's infidelity. The UK's leading celebrity biographer Sean Smith has travelled to her home town to uncover the truth about her upbringing, her unconditional love for her mother, her loyalty to her extended family, her feud with her elder brother and her unsettled relationship with her Jamaican father, who left home for good when she was four. He discovers a sensitive and secretive woman, who managed to keep her long-term relationship with a member of one of the country's best-known boy bands hidden from public scrutiny. For the first time that love affair can now be revealed. He examines the circumstances that led to the break-up of her marriage to rapper MC Harvey and the effect that unhappy time has had on her life. Aleshadescribes a roller-coaster career that began when she was 'discovered' at a dance class in Central London. She achieved huge early success with Mis-Teeq, who had seven consecutive top ten hits before their record label went bust. Her subsequent solo career stalled when she was dropped by Polydor before her debut album was even released, but she turned things around with a spectacular victory on Strictly Come Dancing. Sean Smith lays bare her subsequent TV career, including the row over her appointment as a judge on the programme, as well as her triumphant switch to Britain's Got Talentin 2012. Aleshais the dramatic and uplifting account of her journey from a humble start in life and how she overcame all obstacles in her way to become an inspiration to women everywhere.
The Lacuna Cabal Montreal Young Woman's Book Club loves to bring to life tableaux from the books they read. But when they begin to enact the Epic of Gilgamesh, in the early days of the Iraq War, the book begins to enact them instead. And, as it does, the Cabal starts to splinter, driving our narrators out of their own tale. Cross-dressing Aline becomes obsessed with the Baghdad Blogger, Anna with dabbling in prostitution, and Emily with the maker of the Fitzbot, an ambulatory artificial-intelligence experiment. In the centre of it all is Runner Coghill, who is still mourning her twin sister and who brought to the group the ten priceless cuneiform Gilgamesh stones. Underlying it all is the tale of telling the tale, the convolutedness and self-consciousness of our delightful narrators, Jennifer and Danielle, as they reconstruct the tangled story to bring us a novel that is cryptographically charming and eruditely engrossing. 'A sort of Tristram Shandy for the twenty-first century, Sean Dixon's first novel is an intellectual, sexual, logorrheac, bibliophilic, cryptological, political and archaeological rant of the first order. It'll change your idea of what "written in stone" means, and itll blow your mind too.' - Michael Redhill
Annie steals a painting of St. Sebastian from a museum and brings it home to her husband. On the other side of the city, a man cursed with a permanent erection attempts to hang himself."--Publisher.
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