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Jordan Tannahill

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Jordan Tannahill
Born (1988-05-19) May 19, 1988 (age 36)
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Occupationauthor, playwright, film and theatre director
Spouse
​
(m. 2024)​
Website
jordantannahill.com

Jordan Tannahill (born May 19, 1988) is a Canadian author, playwright, filmmaker, and theatre director.

His novels and plays have been translated into twelve languages, and honoured with a number of prizes including two Governor General's Literary Awards.[1] His debut novel, Liminal, was honoured with France's 2021 Prix des Jeunes Libraires.[2] His second novel, The Listeners, made the Canadian fiction bestsellers list, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Giller Prize.[3] The Listeners was adapted into a limited series, directed by Janicza Bravo, for the BBC.[4][5]

Tannahill has been described as "the enfant terrible of Canadian Theatre" by Libération[6] and The Walrus,[7] "one of Canada's most extraordinary artists" by CBC Arts,[8] and "widely celebrated as one of Canada's most accomplished young playwrights, filmmakers and all-round multidisciplinary artists" by the Toronto Star.[9] In 2019, CBC Arts named Tannahill as one of sixty-nine LGBTQ Canadians, living or deceased, who has shaped the country's history.[10]

Early life

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Tannahill was born and raised in Ottawa, where he attended Canterbury High School. He moved to Toronto at the age of eighteen, and began making short films and staging experimental plays, often with non-traditional collaborators like night-shift workers, frat boys, preteens, and employees of Toronto's famed Honest Ed's discount emporium.[11][12][13][14] In his early twenties, he made several photographic and video works with artist Nina Arsenault.[15][16] After living in Toronto for ten years, Tannahill moved to London in 2016, where he became active in the city's queer nightlife and kink scene.[17][18]

Videofag

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In 2012, Tannahill and his then-boyfriend William Ellis founded and ran Videofag, an alternative arts space operated out of a defunct barbershop in Toronto's Kensington Market. The space doubled as the couple's home and became an influential hub for counterculture in the city, until its closure in 2016.[19][20]

Novels

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Liminal

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Tannahill's debut novel, Liminal, published in 2018, is a work of autofiction which follows the author as he reckons with the nature of consciousness and the abject, precipitated by the sight of his mother's sleeping - or possibly dead - body.[21] In her review of the novel, Martha Schabas of The Globe and Mail wrote "Tannahill's lushly intelligent debut... captures something illuminating and undefinable about the present moment; it speaks in the code and cadences of the late 2010s and paints an incisive portrait of the demographic we call millennial", and compared it to the work of authors Ben Lerner, Rachel Cusk and Karl Ove Knausgaard.[22] In Le Devoir, Anne-Frédérique Hébert-Dolbec called the novel "a prodigious odyssey that tests the limits of reason and materiality."[23] Liminal won the 2021 Prix des Jeunes Libraires.[24]

The Listeners

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Main article: The Listeners (TV series)

The Listeners, published in 2021, follows Claire Devon, a woman whose life and beliefs are irrevocably altered after she starts hearing The Hum. The book made the Canadian national bestsellers list, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Giller Prize.[25] In their citation, the Giller jury called the novel "a masterful interrogation of the body, as well as the desperate violence that undergirds our lives in the era of social media, conspiracies, isolation and environmental degradation."[26]

The Listeners was originally written as a story for a new opera by composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist Royce Vavrek, which premiered at the Norwegian National Opera in 2022, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz.[27] Reviewing the production at Opera Philadelphia in 2024, Zachary Woolfe in The New York Times called The Listeners "the unmissable opera of the season",[28] while Alex Ross of The New Yorker called it "mesmerizing" and declared Mazzoli "a once-in-a-generation magician of the orchestra."[29]

Tannahill adapted his novel into a limited series, produced by Element Pictures for the BBC, directed by Janicza Bravo and starring Rebecca Hall.[30] The series premiered at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival,[31] and aired to critical acclaim[32][33] on BBC on November 19, 2024.

Other Writing

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Tannahill is a regular contributor to Butt (magazine),[34] and has both written and spoken openly about his experiences with escorting and kink.[35][36]

Tannahill's book of essays on theatre, Theatre of the Unimpressed: In Search of Vital Drama, first published in 2015,[37] was called "essential reading for anybody interested in the state of contemporary theatre and performance" by The Globe and Mail.[38] In 2022, Playbill listed the book as one of fourteen essential books for theatre students.[39]

Theatre and performance

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Tannahill's plays frequently explore the nature of belief, queer identity, power relations, and the body as a political subject.[40] His work has been performed across North America and Europe, particularly in Germany, where several of his plays are in state theater repertory.[41][42]

Age of Minority: Three Solo Plays

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Tannahill's first collection of plays, Age of Minority: Three Solo Plays, was published in 2014 and received Canada's Governor General's Award for English-language drama.[43] The collection features three plays for solo performers: Get Yourself Home Skyler James, the true story of a young female soldier who deserts the American military, the live-streamed monologue rihannaboi95, about the fallout from a queer teenager's viral video, and Peter Fechter: 59 Minutes, which imagines the final hour in the life of Peter Fechter, an adolescent from East Berlin shot while attempting to cross the Berlin Wall in 1962. An early example of virtual theatre, rihannaboi95 was performed nightly in a bedroom over live-stream video in 2013, and won a Dora Mavor Moore Award for 'Outstanding New Play for Young Audiences.'[44]

Late Company

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Tannahill's play Late Company, about two sets of parents seeking closure after a tragedy involving their sons, premiered in 2014 at the SummerWorks Festival in Toronto, where it won the Best Production and Audience Choice awards, and went on to receive multiple productions across Canada, and abroad.[45] In 2017, the Finborough Theatre production of Late Company transferred to the Trafalgar Theatre on London's West End.[46][47][48]

Concord Floral

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Concord Floral, a play written by Tannahill, and developed and directed by Erin Brubacher and Cara Spooner over a three-year process involving Toronto-area teenagers, is a reimagining of Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron as a contemporary suburban ghost story. The play was called “easily the best new play of the year”[49] by J. Kelly Nestruck of The Globe and Mail when it premiered in 2014 at The Theatre Centre in Toronto, and went on to receive productions in translation around the world, at theatres including the Volkstheater, Vienna and the Deutsches Theater (Berlin). Concord Floral was a finalist for the 2016 Governor General's Award for English-language drama, and won a Dora Mavor Moore Award for 'Outstanding New Play'.

Botticelli in the Fire & Sunday in Sodom

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Tannahill premiered a double-bill of plays, Botticelli in the Fire & Sunday in Sodom in 2016 at Canadian Stage in Toronto. The first play, Botticelli in the Fire, is a queer reimagining of the events leading up to the bonfire of the vanities in 1497 Florence, while the second play, Sunday in Sodom, is a retelling of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah from the perspective of Lot's wife. The plays won the 2018 Governor General's Award for English-language drama, and the Dora Mavor Moore Award for 'Outstanding Production'. Botticelli in the Fire went on to receive several international productions, including at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, DC and the Hampstead Theatre in London.[50]

Declarations

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Tannahill's play Declarations premiered in 2018 at Canadian Stage in Toronto, and was later presented at the 2021 Festival TransAmériques in Montreal. The fragmentary and lyrical play, inspired by the terminal illness of the playwright's mother, was described by Karen Fricker of The Toronto Star as "a devastating but joyous statement about life and grief."[51] While the text of the play is fixed, it is accompanied by a gestural score improvised anew by the five performers with every performance. Critic José Teodoro wrote in the Literary Review of Canada, "the way Declarations is structured, the musical feeling of it, the way elements accumulate and unify, then splinter off, plays as something closer to what is called 'systems music' as exemplified by modern composers such as Steve Reich."[52]

Draw Me Close

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Tannahill's virtual reality performance Draw Me Close, co-produced by London's National Theatre and the National Film Board of Canada, premiered at the 2017 Tribeca Film Festival, and in a longer iteration at the Venice Biennale's inaugural extended reality section, Venice Immersive.[53] The piece, which featured a pioneering fusion of live performance, motion capture technology, virtual reality, and animation,[54] had runs at London's Young Vic Theatre in 2019, and Toronto's Soulpepper Theatre in 2021. In his review of the Toronto production for Now (newspaper), Glenn Sumi described the show's climax as "one of the most moving things I’ve experienced in theatre or film."[55] Draw Me Close was nominated for "Outstanding New Play" at the 2022 Dora Mavor Moore Awards.

Is My Microphone On?

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Commissioned by Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus and Theater der Welt, Is My Microphone On? is a performance text for an ensemble of young performers who speak directly to the adult audience about their inheritance of a broken political system, and a climate in crisis. Developed and directed by Erin Brubacher, in collaboration with ensembles of teenagers from Düsseldorf and Toronto, the play premiered at the 2022 Theater der Welt, before productions in Canada, Germany, Sweden, and as part of the 2023 National Theatre Connections festival in London.[56][57] The play was a finalist for the 2023 Governor General's Award for English-language drama.

Prince Faggot

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It was announced by Playbill in 2024 that Tannahill's play Prince Faggot will have its world premiere Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons, in a co-production with Soho Rep, in spring 2025.[58]

Other Performance

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Tannahill's work in contemporary dance includes choreographing and performing with Christopher House in Marienbad for the Toronto Dance Theatre in 2016; and writing the text for Xenos in 2018, and Outwitting the Devil in 2019, two shows by choreographer Akram Khan, which have toured internationally to venues including Sadler's Wells Theatre, Festival d'Avignon, and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Now (newspaper) listed both Marienbad and Xenos as Top 10 dance shows of the 2010s decade.[59]

Tannahill's production of Sheila Heti's play All Our Happy Days Are Stupid, which he directed with frequent collaborator Erin Brubacher, premiered in 2014 at Videofag, more than a decade after Heti first began the script. Heti's struggle to write the play is one of the central plot-lines in her bestselling novel How Should a Person Be?.[60] The production, which featured original songs by Dan Bejar, was remounted at The Kitchen in New York City in 2015.

Political views

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On November 23, 2018, Tannahill, a resident of Budapest at the time,[61] read the entirety of Judith Butler's Gender Trouble over nine hours outside the Hungarian Parliament Building in protest of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's decision to revoke accreditation and funding for gender studies programs in the country.[62][63]

On April 4, 2019, Tannahill and three collaborators staged a protest action during high tea at The Dorchester Hotel.[64] The action was in response to Brunei's proposed introduction of laws that would make homosexual sex and adultery punishable by stoning to death.[65] The Dorchester Collection is a luxury hotel operator owned by the Brunei Investment Agency. Video documentation of the protest action, and Tannahill's forceful removal from the hotel, went viral soon after it was posted online.[66]

Personal life

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Tannahill married actor Brandon Flynn in October 2024.[67]

Bibliography

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Fiction

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  • The Listeners, 2021
  • Liminal, 2018

Plays

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  • Prince Faggot, 2025[68]
  • Is My Microphone On?, 2021
  • Draw Me Close, 2019
  • Declarations, 2018
  • Botticelli in the Fire, 2016
  • Sunday in Sodom, 2016
  • Concord Floral, 2014
  • Late Company, 2013
  • rihannaboi95, 2013
  • Peter Fechter: 59 Minutes, 2013
  • Post Eden, 2010
  • Get Yourself Home Skyler James, 2010

Non-fiction

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  • The Videofag Book, 2018
  • Theatre of the Unimpressed: In Search of Vital Drama, 2015

References

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  1. ^ "Thomas King wins Governor General's award for fiction". The Globe and Mail, November 18, 2014.
  2. ^ "Prix des jeunes libraires". Prix des jeunes libraires, June 16, 2021.
  3. ^ "What you need to know about the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize finalists". CBC Books, November 5, 2021.
  4. ^ Blyth, Antonia (2024-09-10). "'The Listeners': Director Janicza Bravo, Rebecca Hall & Writer Jordan Tannahill Discuss Their Show's Knife Edge Of Normalcy – Toronto Studio". Deadline. Retrieved 2024-09-27.
  5. ^ "BBC announces new drama The Listeners starring Rebecca Hall". www.bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 2024-09-27.
  6. ^ "Liminal: en un laps d'antan". December 20, 2019.
  7. ^ "Play Fighting". April 6, 2017.
  8. ^ "Our very personal picks for the best movies, music, theatre and art of 2018". December 27, 2018.
  9. ^ "Marienbad Enigmantic but Compelling". Toronto Star. May 27, 2016.
  10. ^ "Super Queeros!". CBC Arts. Jun 20, 2019.
  11. ^ "SummerWorks 2009: The Graveyard Shift". Torontoist, August 8, 2009.
  12. ^ "Takes Two Men To Make a Brother at The Harbourfront Centre" Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine. The Harbourfront Centre, February 6, 2009.
  13. ^ "Biting Into Rhubarb: Part Two". Torontoist, February 19, 2010.
  14. ^ "Honesty". Now, October 22, 2012.
  15. ^ "After a death hoax in February, playwright, performance artist and journalist Nina Arsenault speaks candidly about art, aging and mortality". Toronto Star, March 18, 2021.
  16. ^ "Performing Que(e)ries: Nina Arsenault with J. Paul Halferty". City University of New York, 2013.
  17. ^ "6 fetishists debunk the kink scene's biggest myths". Dazed, December 1, 2022.
  18. ^ "Author Jordan Tannahill is making latex dreams come true". Interview (magazine), April 19, 2022.
  19. ^ "Videofags: A new queer art space in Kensington - ready to blow your mind". fab, October 17, 2012.
  20. ^ "Video fags: Couple creates queer Kensington salon". Xtra!, October 16, 2012.
  21. ^ "Jordan Tannahill's Liminal paints an incisive portrait of millennials" The Globe and Mail, February 8, 2018.
  22. ^ "Jordan Tannahill's Liminal paints an incisive portrait of millennials" The Globe and Mail, February 8, 2018.
  23. ^ "«Liminal»: entre la vie et la mort, un temps suspendu" Le Devoir, December 28, 2019.
  24. ^ "Prix des jeunes libraires". Prix des jeunes libraires, June 16, 2021.
  25. ^ Adina Bresge, "Two-time runner-up Miriam Toews among authors on Giller Prize shortlist". The Globe and Mail, October 5, 2021.
  26. ^ "What you need to know about the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize finalists". CBC Books, November 5, 2021.
  27. ^ "The Listeners at Den Norske Opera & Ballet". Den Norske Opera & Ballet, November 11, 2022.
  28. ^ "6 Performances Our Classical Critics Can't Stop Thinking About". The New York Times, October 30, 2024.
  29. ^ "Missy Mazzoli's Mesmerizing New Opera About a Sonic Cult". The New Yorker, October 7, 2024.
  30. ^ "BBC announces new drama The Listeners starring Rebecca Hall". BBC, February 21, 2024.
  31. ^ "The 8 best movies (and one TV show) we saw at the Toronto International Film Festival". The LA Times, September 12, 2024.
  32. ^ "Rebecca Hall's hauntingly delicate drama will paralyse you with dread". The Guardian, November 19, 2024.
  33. ^ "The Listeners review - a primetime mystery with an ear for the profound". The Times, November 19, 2024.
  34. ^ "Durk Dehner". Butt (magazine), Autumn 2022.
  35. ^ "Author Jordan Tannahill is making latex dreams come true". Interview (magazine), April 19, 2022.
  36. ^ ‘Gimp play is a craft’: how a Canadian writer went from fetish sex work to creating powerful BBC drama, The Guardian, Nov 15, 2024.
  37. ^ "The 50 most anticipated books of 2015 (the first half, anyway)". The Globe and Mail, January 2, 2015.
  38. ^ "Jordan Tannahill's Theatre of the Unimpressed is essential reading for anybody interested in contemporary theatre". The Globe and Mail, June 12, 2015.
  39. ^ "14 Essential Books for Theatre Students". Playbill, September 10, 2022.
  40. ^ "Signs of good things to come". The Globe and Mail. January 10, 2013.
  41. ^ "Concord Floral (Das Gewächshaus)", Deutsches Theater.
  42. ^ "Ist mein Mikro an?", Residence Theatre.
  43. ^ "Governor General's Award winner Jordan Tannahill's rainbow connection". National Post. November 18, 2014.
  44. ^ "rihannaboi95 will haunt you in a way no live performance could". Now (newspaper), November 23, 2021.
  45. ^ "Theatre review: Late Company is excruciatingly good". Vancouver Courier, December 7, 2020.
  46. ^ "Late Company, Trafalgar Studios - this play is unapologetically conventional but utterly transfixing - review". Go London. August 26, 2017.
  47. ^ "Late Company, theatre review: Nimble study of a prickly subject". The Telegraph. August 25, 2017. Archived from the original on October 5, 2017. Retrieved October 4, 2017.
  48. ^ "This is theatre in its purest form: a cathartic cleansing". The Independent. May 3, 2017.
  49. ^ "Concord Floral artfully structured yet full of suspense". The Globe and Mail, October 17, 2014.
  50. ^ "Botticelli in the Fire review - audacious Renaissance romp". The Guardian, October 27, 2019.
  51. ^ "Declarations is a devastating but joyous statement about life and grief". The Toronto Star, Jan 16, 2018.
  52. ^ "The Instance of Disappearance". Literary Review of Canada, February 2018.
  53. ^ "The Films of Venice Virtual Reality Selection". La Biennale di Venezia.
  54. ^ "The 4 Best Virtual Reality Experiences at the Tribeca Film Festival". Time Magazine, April 27, 2017.
  55. ^ "Draw Me Close is an Unforgettable Experience". Now (newspaper), November 3, 2021.
  56. ^ "Ist mein Mikro an?". Residence Theatre, March 19, 2023.
  57. ^ "Connections". Royal National Theatre, March 19, 2023.
  58. ^ "Jordan Tannahill's Prince F sets World Premiere Off-Broadway via Playwrights Horizons and Soho Rep". Playbill, Oct 29, 2024.
  59. ^ "The 10 Best Toronto dance shows of the 2010s decade". Now (newspaper), December 9, 2019.
  60. ^ "How Sheila Heti's long-abandoned play went from her bottom drawer to a Toronto stage". The Globe and Mail. June 17, 2014.
  61. ^ "Budapest Diary". Canadian Theatre Review, August 12, 2019.
  62. ^ "No problem: a Canadian writer protested against the abolition of gender studies at Parliament". Merce, November 24, 2018.
  63. ^ "On a Friday for seven hours, a Canadian writer in Parliament was reading one of the most well-known books of gender studies". 444, November 24, 2018.
  64. ^ "LGBTQ+ Activists Just Invaded Dorchester Hotel to Protest Brunei". Out, April 4, 2019.
  65. ^ "Protester pulls out megaphone and interrupts patrons at Brunei-owned hotel" Archived 2019-04-05 at the Wayback Machine. Gay Star News, April 4, 2019.
  66. ^ "Gay rights activists infiltrate Dorchester Hotel in protest over Brunei death penalty". Metro, April 6, 2019.
  67. ^ Taylor, Elise (November 4, 2024). "Brandon Flynn and Jordan Tannahill Wore Ludovic de Saint Sernin for Their Avant-Garde East Village Wedding". Vogue. Retrieved November 4, 2024.
  68. ^ "Jordan Tannahill's Prince F sets World Premiere Off-Broadway via Playwrights Horizons and Soho Rep". Playbill, Oct 29, 2024.
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