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Michael Cook (playwright)

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Michael Cook
Born(1933-02-14)14 February 1933
Fulham, London, England
Died1 July 1994(1994-07-01) (aged 61)
St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada
OccupationTheatre reviewer and playwright
Period1971 - 1991

Michael Cook (14 February 1933 – 1 July 1994) was a Canadian playwright.

Early life

Born in Fulham, London, England, Cook settled in Newfoundland, Canada, in 1965 after serving seven years in the British Army, mostly in Asia.[citation needed]

Career

Most of Cook's work, including his best-known plays, Jacob's Wake and The Head, Guts and Soundbone Dance, are set in Newfoundland, which provides a sometimes realistic and sometimes richly symbolic backdrop for his poetic rendering of lives in continual conflict with natural elements.[citation needed]

Personal life

Cook married three times, and fathered twelve children, including actor Sebastian Spence by his wife, Janis.[citation needed]

Cook retained a residence in Stratford, Ontario. While passing through St Johns on a trip to his summer home on Random Island, Cook became ill and died.[citation needed]

Plays

  • Tiln, 1971.
  • Colour The Flesh the Colour of Dust, 1972.
  • The Head, Guts and Sound Bone Dance, 1973.
  • Jacob's Wake, 1974.
  • Quiller, 1975.
  • Therese's Creed, 1976.
  • The Fisherman's Revenge, 1976. (children's play)
  • On The Rim of the Curve, 1977.
  • The Gayden Chronicles, 1980.

Works about Michael Cook

  • Craig Walker, "Michael Cook: Elegy, Allegory and Eschatology," The Buried Astrolabe: Canadian Dramatic Imagination and Western Tradition. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001.

References