Michael Cook (playwright)

Michael Cook (playwright)
Michael Cook
Born 14 February 1933(1933-02-14)
Fulham, London, England
Died 1 July 1994(1994-07-01) (aged 61)
St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador
Occupation Theatre reviewer and playwright
Period 1971 - 1991

Michael Cook (14 February 1933 – 1 July 1994) was a Canadian playwright

Born in Fulham, London, England, Cook settled in Newfoundland, Canada, in 1965 after serving seven years in the British Army, mostly in Asia.

Most of Cook's work, including his best-known plays, Jacob's Wake and The Head, Guts and Soundbone Dance, is set in Newfoundland, which provides a sometimes realistic and sometimes richly symbolic backdrop for his poetic rendering of lives in continual conflict with the natural elements.

He fathered twelve children over the course of his life (eight in England before moving to Canada, Sebastian and Sarah with his second wife, Janis, and Fergus and Perdita with his third wife, Madonna).

He also retained a residence in Stratford, Ontario. He became ill on a trip to his summer home on Random Island, and died in St Johns.

Plays

  • Tiln, 1971.
  • Colour The Flesh the Colour of Dust, 1972.
  • The Head, Guts and Sound Bone Dance, 1973.
  • Jacob's Wake, 1974.
  • Quiller, 1975.
  • Therese's Creed, 1976.
  • The Fisherman's Revenge, 1976. (children's play)
  • On The Rim of the Curve, 1977.
  • The Gayden Chronicles, 1980.

Works about Michael Cook

  • Craig Walker, "Michael Cook: Elegy, Allegory and Eschatology," The Buried Astrolabe: Canadian Dramatic Imagination and Western Tradition. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001.

External links



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