Fault Lines: Greenland – Iceland – Faroe Islands

by Nicolas Billon

Winner of the 2013 Governor General's Award for Drama " Iceland is a beautifully structured and extremely powerful play that haunts the mind. Billon is an original and exciting voice."—Atom Egoyan Nicolas Billon's acclaimed trilogy of plays tackles, with wit and dark humor, the banking crisis, the whale hunt, and a real estate deal gone horribly awry. Told through interwoven monologues, the plays in Fault Lines are a surprising hybrid of Wallace Shawn and Neil Labute. Nicolas Billon 's plays and translations have been produced at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Soulpepper Theatre, and the Canadian Stage.

Genres: Plays

180 pages, Paperback

First published September 20, 2013

About the author

Nic writes for theatre, film, and television.

His work has been produced around the world and won over a dozen awards, including a Governor-General’s Award for Drama, a Canadian Screen Award, and a Writers Guild of Canada Screenwriting Award.

Reviews

[Gareth Davies · Rating 4 out of 5]

GREENLAND
Loved the three separate monologues that are all part of the same family.
Each character was so different from the next, but still felt similar in that they only vary within a similar opinion/feeling.

ICELAND
I didn’t like Kassandra’s monologue at the beginning, it felt like it could’ve been much shorter than the other two.
Halim was such a fun character as he is an obvious antagonist, but everything is reasoned so well.
Not sure how I feel about the ending, who are the men in suits?, what does Iceland mean?, why does Kassandra not make the decision as part of the show?

FAROE ISLANDS
The set/entrance of greeting people and having name tags as if they’re coming to her seminar is a really fun idea. Same goes for how it ends with time being up and AA needing the room.
Loved how the entire play builds to this climax of Rachel abandoning their original plan and what she had been fighting so hard for.

[Marc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Greenland - 5 stars
Iceland - 5 stars
Faroe Islands - 3.5 stars

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw Iceland in the theatre and found it excellent - clever and thought provoking. I would say that it is the best of the trilogy but all are well worth a read. Greenland looks at the conflict between our personal needs and those of the greater world. A glaciologist 'discovers' a small island separated from the mainland of Greenland by the retreating ice. Just as the separation of the two land masses becomes evident, so too is his separation from his own family.
Iceland examines the impact on three wildly different characters of the fall out from the financial crash of 2008 and of capitalism in general. The last, Faroe Islands concerns causes and how our personal lives affect the causes we choose.
The dialogue in all three is sharp and witty, you find yourself wanting to slow it down so. You can remember it. The staging is interesting - a series of monologues which fit together into an overall narrative.
Highly recommended.

[Lyf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nicolas Billon doesn't pull punches and delivers three very well crafted, difficult plays. Each one draws you in, slaps the rose colored glasses off your face and then tries to comfort you, awkwardly, like someone who has told you the one thing about you that is the ugliest thing you have tried so hard to hide, and then tries to help you sit in that moment for just the right amount of time. Difficult and necessary.

[John]

Just a few pages in and blown away! Those few pages are more than worth the price of admission. I expect the rest to be savoury, savoury gravy.

Now I've finished all three plays. What a trilogy of one-acts! Exquisite, disturbing, cathartic gems! Someone please stage Fault Lines in Edmonton!

Oh, and . . . the cover illustration by Jonathan Bartlett, www.bartlettstudio.com, is perfect perfect perfect.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

So good! Funny, funny, funny and then sad. Billon is able to take on a variety of vernaculars and they all ring true; well-deserving of the Governor General's Award for Drama.