The Passage of Sono Nis
Collected Plays
- Publisher
- Libros Libertad
- Initial publish date
- Jul 2007
- Category
- Canadian
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780978186531
- Publish Date
- Jul 2007
- List Price
- $29.95
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
The plays for stage, radio, and television of J. Michael Yates have entertained people around the world, including the Middle East and Asia, for forty years. They have been produced or mounted by CBC, BBC, Radio-diffusion France, Radiotelevisione Italia, Romania Râdio Cultural, Nippon Hoso Kyokai, NRK (Oslo), Sveriges Radio (Stockholm), DR (Copenhagen), Westdeutscherrundfunk (Köln), Sarländische Rundfunk (Saarbrücken), Senderfreies (Berlin), Norddeutscher Rundfunk (Hamburg), Süddeutscher Rundfunk, ALMO (Antwerpen), Algemeene Vereeniging Radio Omroep (Amsterdam), mounted by Factory Lab Theatre, Memorial Theatre, Guthrie Theatre, and the Scarborough Players. Some of the plays have been published in book form, such as Night Freight, The Net, Search for the Tse Tse Fly, The Calling, and Quarks. Others have been published in magazines – Performing Arts in Canada, The Fiddlehead, Mundus Artium, and Harper's. Most of these are one-act plays; they are not only compared to Beckett, Albee, and Pinter, but they are most often mounted or produced with these writers. The Passage of Sono Nis: Collected Plays by J. Michael Yates is his thirty-second book.
About the author
J. Michael Yates was born in Fulton, Missouri on April 10, 1938. After studies at the Universities of Missouri and Michigan, he received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Having taught in Ohio and Alaska, Yates arrived in Canada in July of 1966 and remained on the staff of the Creative Writing Department at UBC from 1966 to 1971, meeting Charles Lillard there in the fall of 1967. He participated in the founding of "Contemporary Literature in Translation" with Andreas Schroeder in 1968 and co-edited Volvox: Poetry from the Unofficial Languages of Canada (with Charles Lillard) in 1971. Partly influenced by Lillard, who was born in Alaska, Yates became one of the first of numerous urban writers to try living on the Queen Charlotte Islands, moving there in 1971 to operate Sono Nis Press, a literary press for which he provided the name. Yates has also pursued other interests in advertising, broadcasting, photography, computer programming and correctional services, to name a few.
Excerpt: The Passage of Sono Nis: Collected Plays (by (author) J. Michael Yates)
HE: You say while we're in bed together, I'm thinking of the telephone.
SHE: Isn't it true?
HE: Perhaps... sometimes.
SHE: Of course it's true.
HE: Then why do you want me to come back to bed?
SHE: Put the phone down and come to bed.
HE: But does it ever occur to you that sometimes while I'm on the telephone, I think of being in bed with you? (In to phone) Forgive me, I have these lapses... distractions come and I'm so susceptible. I started to say: we men find expression so difficult. We don't trust words. We begin with magnificent intentions of honesty, but something happens, you know? Always we must turn to words when, that is, even though, we don't believe in them. As soon as we've said a sentence, we're astounded that we've said it. Or perhaps we're fascinated by the shapes of words and their sounds. Before we know it, we're changing the arrangement of the sentence. Finally, the sentence is beautiful, but... it bears no relation to what we so honestly wished to say.
SHE: What must I do to coax you back to bed? (Moving to the side of the bed nearest the telephone)
HE: Believe me, I want to come to bed.
SHE: Then come.
HE: I can't.
SHE: Why?
HE: The telephone wire isn't long enough. (She begins to cry) Please don't do that, you know I can't stand it when you do that, it closes a door between us. Why are you crying?
Editorial Reviews
Yates is a fiery comet blazing through the Stygian intellectual space of our existence.
Doug Ramsey, world-renowned jazz critic