Debut collection of one of North America's most promising young playwrights released

The Writers' Collective is pleased to present Motifs & Repetitions & Other Plays by C.E. Gatchalian

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Motifs & Repetitions & Other Plays
By C.E. Gatchalian
Available March 2003
The Writers' Collective
ISBN: 1-932133-49-6
Paperback; 5.5 x 8.5

The Writers' Collective is pleased to announce the publication of Motifs & Repetitions & Other Plays, a debut collection of one-act plays by Canadian playwright C.E. Gatchalian.

The plays in this collection reveal a writer with a provocative and uncompromising vision. Motifs & Repetitions is a comical but ultimately heartbreaking commentary on young love; Hands spotlights the disintegration of a tormented family; Claire is an absurd, Sartrean expose of the brutal power structures in relationships; and Star is a brief but bracing mantra on the nature of obsession. With his simple settings and spare, rhythmical dialogue, C.E. Gatchalian creates a dark, claustrophobic world where sex, love and obsession mix to form terrifying realities.

Though Gatchalian has been compared to British playwright Sarah Kane and his work bears the imprint of masters such as Beckett, Albee and Mamet, the final impression left by these plays is that of a writer whose voice is entirely his own.

This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to keep up to date on the innovative happenings in today's alternative North American theatre scene.

"Gatchalian is well on his way to making his mark in contemporary drama."
--Charlie Cho, CBC Radio

"At the tender age of 24, Vancouver playwright C.E. Gatchalian creates a one-act play so sexual, so violent and so sexually violent that it could encompass the decades-long traumas of an octogenarian. If a writer expunges demons by putting them down on paper, Gatchalian's young soul must now be clean as a whistle....Claire is evidence of greater, and no doubt even more disturbing, things to come from the writer."
--Vancouver Sun Theatre Critic Peter Birnie on Claire

C.E Gatchalian was born in Vancouver in 1974. He studied Creative Writing and Theatre at the University of British Columbia (BFA, 1996; MFA, 2002). His first play, Motifs & Repetitions, aired on Canada's Bravo! channel in 1997 and on the Knowledge Network in 1998. His next play, Claire, was produced in Vancouver in 1999. His features and arts criticism have appeared in numerous publications, including Xtra! West (to which he is a regular contributor), the Georgia Straight, and the Vancouver Sun, and he has short fiction forthcoming in the literary journal MAS-Zine. Motifs & Repetitions & Other Plays is his first book.

For more information, please contact:

Chris MacDonald
literarypr@shaw.ca