Thirteen Hands And Other Plays

by Carol Shields

With a Foreword by the Author“Before becoming a playwright I was a novelist, and one who was often impatient with the requisite description of weather or scenery or even with the business of moving people from room to room. I was more interested in the sound of people talking to each other, reacting to each other, or leaving silences for others to fall into.” -- Carol ShieldsFrom one of Canada’s most beloved authors comes a collection of four works written for the stage, including her most popular and highly acclaimed play Thirteen Hands. The theatrical form allows Carol Shields’ strength as a master of dialogue to shine at its brightest, as she returns to themes she explores in her love, family, friendship, and the hidden meanings and larger truths found beneath the surface of the minutiae of daily life. Thirteen Hands and Other Plays is an exhilarating introduction to Shields’ considerable achievements as a playwright.Departures and Arrivals (1990) dramatizes how lives are heightened and enlarged when taken within the frame of public spaces -- airports, train stations, public streets -- so that we all become, in a sense, actors. Thirteen Hands (1993), a musical, valorizes a consistently overlooked group in our society, “the blue-rinse set” -- also known as “the white glove brigade” or “the bridge club biddies” -- and has had the strongest professional run of all Shields’ plays. Fashion, Power, Guilt and the Charity of Families (1995), written with her daughter, Catherine Shields, interrogates the ambivalence felt towards families, the drive we all share to find or create some kind of family, and the equally strong desire to escape the family’s fury. Anniversary (1998), written with Dave Williamson, is a domestic drama of discontented, middle class suburbanites. One couple in the play are married and pretending to be close to separation. Another couple, who are separated, are pretending to be married. The additional irony is that the separated couple are still emotionally together, while the married couple have already emotionally separated.

Genres: Drama, Plays

432 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Carol Ann Shields was an American-born Canadian author. She is best known for her successful 1993 novel The Stone Diaries, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction as well as the Governor General's Award. Her novel Swann won the Best Novel Arthur Ellis Award in 1988.

Reviews

[Olivia MacDougall · Rating 2 out of 5]

Bad. Sorry.

Departures and Arrivals: 2/5 stars

Anniversary: 1/5 stars

Fashion, Power, Guilt and The Charity of Family: 3/5 stars

Thirteen hands: 1/5

On average 2/5 stars

Don’t waste your money or time on this.

[Tanya · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just not my type of Play

[Meg Deere · Rating 1 out of 5]

Carol Shields is a wonderful writer. She is not a playwright, and has no sense of theatre. Departures and Arrivals is popular in Canada's schools and Universities because it has such a large cast. That's it.

[Tracy Schillemore · Rating 3 out of 5]

Certainly a good play for female roles.

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

Departures and Arrivals - 3.5 stars
Anniversary - 4 stars
Fashion, Power, Guilt and the Charity of Families - 3
13 Hands - 2