A Splendid, Savage Place by Liesl Lafferty

ABOUT THE PLAY

A Splendid, Savage Place is a comedy about Hannah, a successful news anchor, who wants to continue to climb her career ladder. Unfortunately, her co-anchor is an nightmare and one day, she punches him on-air. When she returns to her hometown for a short reprieve, Hannah's feisty, yet ailing grandmother announces her desire for an assisted death. Hannah's mother, Elaine, is staunchly against it and the conflict begins. Simultaneously, three suitors sniff around vying for Hannah’s attention, and she questions her own life choices.

PLAWRIGHT BIO

Liesl Lafferty is a Jessie award-winning director, dramaturg and playwright, focusing mainly on creating new Canadian works. After graduating from University, Liesl went straight into show business. In Vancouver, her career highlights include directing A Town Called Hockey, which she also co-wrote with Gary Jones and Richard Side, at the Arts Club Theatre, and winning the Jessie Richardson, Larry Lillo Award for Outstanding Direction for co-directing House, by Daniel MacIvor. Liesl received Jessie nominations for directing and producing Drinking with Persephone, by Jenn Griffin. Jenn won the Sydney Risk, Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Original Script and the Jessie Richardson Award Outstanding Performance for that production. They then toured the show across the country and were selected for the New York City Fringe Festival, in 1999. Liesl's first Jessie Richardson Nomination for Outstanding Original Script also came in 1999 for bloodline, which she directed and co-created with Rita Bozi, Dmitry Chepovetsky and Kate Hale. In 2007, Liesl collaged three original plays together for a unique presentation called Blind Submission, by Dmitry Chepovetsky, Jenn Griffin and Heidi Lynne Weeks at the Theatre Centre in Toronto. In 2008, Liesl directed Lori Triolo's Jessie Richardson Nominated performance in their critically-acclaimed production of The Sweetest Swing in Baseball, by Rebecca Gilman, with the Evolving Arts Collective in Vancouver. Liesl was dramaturg for Fugue Theatre's Via Beatrice, by Jenn Griffin, which received a Jessie Richardson Nomination for Outstanding Original Script in 2009. For the 2009 Toronto Fringe and the 2010 Vancouver Fringe, Liesl wrote and directed Canary, a semi-autobiographical comedy about environmental illness. Recently, Liesl has created and directed shows for the Vancouver International Children's Festival and the Inaugural On-site Program at the Vancouver Fringe Festival. In January 2015, her play, Re-Calculating, co-written with Lucas Foss, a Realwheels Theatre commission, was produced at CBC's Studio 700. Currently, Liesl is writing two plays, Homework, a semi-autobiographical, modern rendition of Pygmalion, and Tartan Skirt, a re-imagining of the infamous, unsolved, Shaughnessy Heights murder of the nursemaid Janet Smith. For the creation of Tartan Skirt, Liesl acknowledges the assistance of the Wet Ink Collective Playwrights' Intensive. For more information, please check out www.liesllafferty.ca.