See Bob Run

by Daniel MacIvor

30 pages, Paperback

About the author

Daniel MacIvor was born in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia in 1962. He is a stalwart of the Canadian theatre scene, having written and directed numerous award-winning productions including See Bob Run, Wild Abandon, 2-2-Tango, This Is A Play, The Soldier Dreams, You Are Here, How It Works, A Beautiful View, Communion, Bingo! and his work has been translated into French, Portuguese, Spanish, Czech, German and Japanese. From 1987 to 2007 with Sherrie Johnson he ran da da kamera, a respected international touring company which brought his work to Australia, the UK and extensively throughout the US and Canada. With long time collaborator Daniel Brooks, he created the solo performances House, Here Lies Henry, Monster, Cul-de-sac and This is What Happens Next.

Daniel won a GLAAD Award and a Village Voice Obie Award in 2002 for his play In On It, which was presented at PS 122 in New York. His play Marion Bridge received its off-Broadway premiere in New York in October of 2005. In 2006, Daniel received the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama for his collection of plays I Still Love You. In 2007, his play His Greatness won the Jessie Richardson Award for Best New Play in Vancouver. In 2008, he was awarded the prestigious Siminovitch prize in Theatre.

Also a filmmaker, Daniel has written and directed the feature films Past Perfect, Wilby Wonderful and the short films Permission and Until I Hear From You, and he is the writer of the feature films Trigger, Marion Bridge and co-writer (with Amnon Buchbinder) of Whole New Thing.

Currently, Daniel divides his time between Toronto and Avondale, Nova Scotia and he is playwright in residence at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto.

Reviews

[Martin Denton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bob--short for Roberta--is a young Canadian woman who has hit the road in search of her father. Alone with just a single forlorn piece of luggage, she is hitchhiking, heading east; toward the Water, she says, the only clue she has about the whereabouts of the man her mother ordered out of the house a long time ago. As she climbs into one stranger's car after another, Bob tells stories about her past. It's not long before we piece together her history; I don't think I'm giving too much away by telling you that Bob suffered serious abuse at the hands of the man she is now seeking out. But there are other threads in Bob's narrative that are even more disturbing: the layered memories that she is running from offer a horrifying account of the lasting damage that one human being can do to another. In the end, playwright Daniel MacIvor gives us a heroine beyond repair, if not beyond redemption