Daniel MacIvor
Biography
1962 - Born in Sydney, N.S.
Studied theatre at Dalhousie
Left to work at Stephenville Theatre Festival in Newfoundland.
1984 - Completed theatre programme at George Brown College in Toronto.
1986- Began writing. Founded da da kamera* theatre
Experimented with Sky Gilbert (Bad Times Theatre)
Somewhere I Have Never Travelled a “debacle” (83).
Memory play about growing up in Cape Breton.
Nominated for the Chalmers…
1987 - See Bob Run at da da kamera* theatre. Successful, “hard-hitting female
monologue” (83).
1988 - Started writing for Tarragon Theatre
- Wild Abandon. “bleakly comic, wildly surreal one-man” (83).
*”yes yes the small room” in Russian and Latin
Biography (cont.d)
1990s - Four plays nominated for Chalmers Best Canadian
Play Award.
1990 - White Trash Blue Eyes. “barroom play about neighbourhood
gentrification” (83).
1991 - Never Swim Alone.
- 2-2-Tango. “chorepgraphic duet about gay mating rituals” (83).
- House. “surreal flavour” (84).
Won Chalmers Award. Governor General’s Award
Nomination.
Reprised in film in 1995 (84).
1992 - This is a Play. “hilariously exposes what actors really think when
onstage” (84).
- Jump. “wordless play about weddings” (84).
2001- You Are Here, developed with graduating students of Canada’s
National Theatre School in Montreal. Produced at Theatre Passe
Muraille in Toronto.
Throughout - Many awards, Obies, Doras, Chalmers, Governor Generals.
• The Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, Canada.
• One of the main centers for contemporary playwriting in the
country.
• Located near Casa Loma.
• Founded by Bill and Jane Glassco in 1970. In 1987, Tarragon
purchased and renovated the building that has been its home since
1971. There are two playing spaces: Mainspace (205 seats), The
Extra Space (113 seats).
• Well known for its development, creation and encouragement of
new work. Over 170 works have premiered at Tarragon, including
playwrights Morwyn Brebner, David French, Michael Healey, Joan
MacLeod, Morris Panych, James Reaney, Jason Sherman, Brendan
Gall and Judith Thompson.
(Tarragon Theatre)
One of Canada's most influential alternative theatres, Theatre Passe
Muraille (theatre "goes through walls") was founded in 1968 by director and
playwright Jim Garrard, who started the company out of Rochdale College.
Its radical intention was create a distinctly Canadian voice in theatre. It was
conceived in the notion that theatre should transcend real estate; that plays can be
made and staged anywhere—in barns, in auction rings, in churches, bars,
basements, lofts, even in streetcars; and it was interested in the idea that theatre
need not be a vehicle of social change, but rather it should endeavour always to be
a mirror to social change.
The company gained local notoriety when it was bafflingly charged with
obscenity for the only mildly provocative play by American playwright Rochelle
Owens, Futz (about a farmer who falls in love with his pig, but suffers the
persecution of his intolerant neighbours).
(http://passemuraille.ca/)
General Subject Matter
Includes:
• Audience assault
• Deathbed vigil
• Oedipal revenge fantasies
• Playmaking and memory
• A woman’s painful emotional life
• Estranged couple and their drug-addicted daughter
• Gay divorce and addiction
• Generally - “creatively off-beat plays that intimately
connect performer and audience” (83).
Never Swim Alone
• 1999 - Won award for Over All Excellence at
New York Fringe Festival
• 2000 - Remounted Off Broadway at Soho
Playhouse
• Played in Australia, New Zealand, Cincinnati,
Seattle
The Critics
• “What seemed at first like bombastic but
pathetic machismo turns into combat most
dangerous and haunting” - Seattle Times (86).
• “It’s like a Nature documentary of rutting
stags who can talk.” Geoff Chapman, Toronto
Star (86).
• “A beautiful piece … spare, evocative, funny,
and sad” - Books in Canada (83).
What’s It About?
“Never Swim Alone” is a swift, funny satire
about two Alpha-males and their ruthless
competition for the title of Top Dog. The play is
structured as a surreal egotistic boxing match:
Frank and Bill, two guys in dark suits and bad
ties, square off in a 13 round Battle Royale of
vicious undermining and one-upmanship.
(Signore)
Mysteries in the Play
1. Why are the men at odds? What is at stake?
- “the first man”
- status
2. Who is the referee? Why is she under a
sheet? Why anonymous?
A Study in Human Behaviour
• Male aggression. A “portrait of male one-upmanship” (New
York Times)
• A playful competition, a verbal sparring match that becomes
increasingly bitter and tragic.
• Battles over:
- careers
- sexual endowment
- real estate
- status
Structure
Brief introduction sets the scene:
• A beach
• Last day of summer
• Two boys (now men)
• A girl (referee) - A dead body under a sheet
on the floor
• A challenge race to the point
• A lifeguard’s chair
The Rounds
Winner of each “round” delivers verbal-victory lap
A playful competition, a verbal sparring match that becomes
increasingly bitter and tragic.
“Never Swim Alone is about one-upmanship, but it’s also about the
costs of such fixation, and as the insults grow more personal, MacIvor
paints a perfect satire of the American workaholic…” (Riccio).
• One: Stature • Two: Uniform
• Three: Who falls dead the best
• Four: Friendly Advice, Part One
• Five: Friendly Advice, Part Two
• Six: Members Only
• Seven: Dad
Rounds (cont’d)
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Half Time: (Sets up the race)
Eight: All in the Palm of His Hand
Nine: Lunch Power
Ten: Business Ties
Eleven: My Boy
Twelve: Rumours of Glory
Thirteen: (The end) - Origin of the power
struggle re-enacted, incantatory, climactic.
Who wins? Audience left to decide.
The race to the end.
(pp. 98 to 101)
Style
• Non-linear
• Abstract
• “… short, quiet and highly self-conscious
affairs”
• (Critic’s Notebook)
• Language. - “What unifies Mr. MacIvor’s work
is its crisp, cleanly shaped sentences, filled
with jargon, cliché and other reminders of the
way people actually talk” (Critic’s Notebook).
Humour
• “Are you thinner? Must be your hair.”
• Non-explicit, nuanced pissing contest. (a tie)
• Re. Bill’s mansion pride (“mine, all mine”) Frank says, “I heard
you rent” ( ).
• Frank to Bill: “I mean he likes you. I’m almost sure he likes
you” (91).
• Bill: “… And not only have I shot my horse I have made love in
a stable.”
Frank: “With who, the horse?” (91).
• Frank quotes Nietzsche on p. 88 and Bill retorts, “…If bullshit
had a brain, it would quote Nietzsche” (89).
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXTVR4X
AsCs
Another version
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcB7x9L9
6_E
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUAdMN
_IUUA
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCxHcpO
8mCQ
Works Cited
Critic’s Notebook. “Somewhere Under the Radar, a Discovery Awaits.” New York Times.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/23/theater/23frin.html?_r=0. Accessed 27 January, 2016.
Del Signore, J. “Never Swim Alone,” Arts & Entertainment , Sep 17, 2006 11:50 am .
<http://gothamist.com/2006/09/17/never_swim_alon.php >. Accessed January 26, 2016.
Hunt, R. “Never Swim Alone.” Ross Hunt’s Reviews, Hampton High School/Theatre St. Thomas.
<http://www.stu.ca/~hunt/reviews/swim.htm > . Accessed January 26, 2016.
McGregor, T. “NEVER SWIM ALONE (EMERGENCEE) 2014 TORONTO FRINGE REVIEW.” JULY 5, 2014.
HTTP://WWW.MOONEYONTHEATRE.COM/2014/07/05/NEVER-SWIM-ALONE-EMERGENCEE-2014-TORONTO-FRINGEREVIEW/. ACCESSED JANUARY 26, 2016.
Playwrights Guild of Canada. <https://www.playwrightsguild.ca/daniel-macivor> . Accessed January 26, 2016.
Riccio, A. “Fringe 2006: Never Swim Alone.” < http://newtheatercorps.blogspot.ca/2006/08/fringe-2006-never-swim-alone.html>
Accessed January26, 2016.
Tarragon Theatre. < http://tarragontheatre.com/ > . Accessed January 26, 2016.
Theatre Passe Muraille. <http://passemuraille.ca/ >. Accessed January 27, 2016.
Wassermann, J. Modern Canadian Plays. 5th ed. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2013. 83-101.