Berto_Tony_201307_PhD .pdf - University of Guelph

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within the context of a subsidized theatre company which allowed the script to written
without consideration of its financial viability as a production. The Orchard Drive was
written as a part of coursework, and notably in an academic environment where the
marketability of a potential production was not the foremost concern of the process. The
play’s development process included two readings and dramaturgy from well renowned
Canadian playwright and professor Judith Thompson.
The Orchard Drive’s development in this way could have affected the play’s
provocative and interventionist themes in an opposite manner from one directed towards
product and saleability. From the very onset of the project Thompson stated her objectives
were for Grignard to “break rules” and to “see blood on the page” (Grignard, Driving 93-4).
These instructions can be interpreted to mean that Grignard might risk alienating potential
audience with his explicit aesthetic choices for the sake of aesthetic or artistic value.
Thompson’s instruction to Grignard to break the rules and to disregard “theoretical
approaches” to playwriting is reflected in Grignard’s work and its staged scenes of explicit
and deviant sexuality (97). Grignard writes that he found this “blood” when he “dug deeper
. . . struck a pipe, which I would puncture like an artery and . . . would willingly let the flow
spew out all its bloody memories onto me” (96).
Thompson’s own dramaturgy may very well have informed Grignard’s process.
While Thompson is a Canadian playwright of international standing, her work is renowned
for its sometimes grisly themes, often depicting scenes of humiliation, aberrant sexuality,
violence towards women and torture. Grignard categorises her reputation as a dramaturge
as involving “exorcism, blood, pain, inner experience and childhood terror” (93). As
Grignard’s play developed, his frank depictions of sexuality actually became more explicit,