James Reaney

• Name — James Reaney • Born — 1 September 1926 • Birthplace — Easthope, Ontario, Canada • Died — 11 June 2008 • Place of death — London, Ontario, Canada • Occupation — Writer, Artist, Poet, Playwright, • Language — English • Notable Works — Poems (1972), The Donnellys • Spouse — Colleen Thibaudeau • Children — James Stewart, John Andrew, Susan Alice Elizabeth • Relatives — James Nesbitt Reaney, Elizabeth Henrietta Crear • Awards — Order of Canada, FRSC, Governor General's Award • Website — jamesreaney.com

Reaney was born on a farm in Easthope near Stratford, Ontario to James Nesbitt Reaney and Elizabeth Henrietta Crerar. Almost all of Reaney's poems, stories, and plays are articulations of where he grew up. At a young age he was interested in theatre, and created a puppet show for children while in his early teens.

For Reaney, the new decade also coincided with "a shift of emphasis from poetry to the public and communal form of drama," starting with The Killdeer. "Though he had been interested in drama since childhood, he was encouraged by a friend to write a piece for the University of Toronto's Alumnae Theatre and the work he created, The Killdeer, launched his drama career (and won a prize in the Dominion Drama Festival)." In 1962 he won the Governor General's Award for Poetry or Drama a third time, this time for both his newest book of poetry, Twelve Letters to a Small Town, and his first book of plays, The Killdeer and Other Plays. Reaney "followed up The Killdeer with Colours in the Dark (1969), Listen to the Wind (1972), Masks of Childhood (1972) and plays for children." His play Colours in the Dark was produced at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in 1967. From 1973 to 1975 Reaney wrote the trilogy The Donnellys, which the Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia calls "one of the nation's most important dramas." The three plays debuted at Toronto's Tarragon Theatre, directed by Keith Turnbull. The St. Nicholas Hotel, Part II of the trilogy, won the Chalmers Award. The Donnellys toured nationally in 1975, from Halifax to Vancouver with the NDWT Theatre Company, again with Turnbull directing. In 2023, the Blyth Festival produced all three plays in Reaney's The Donnelly Trilogy in repertory. As well, Reaney coauthored several operas with musician John Beckwith, including Night-Blooming Cereus (1960), The Shivaree (1982), and Crazy To Kill (1988). Other notable Reaney plays include Names and Nicknames, which premiered at the Manitoba Theatre Centre in 1963, directed by John Hirsch and Robert Sherrin); and Alice Through the Looking Glass, which played at the Stratford Festival in 1994, 1995 and in 2014. In 2022, London Ontario's AlvegoRoot Theatre produced a new production of Reaney's 1981 play Gyroscope. Reaney also enjoyed painting and drawing and his art works, from the 1940s to 1990s, were put on exhibit at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario in 2008. Reaney died on June 11, 2008, in London, Ontario.

Reaney's complex symbolic and poetic regional drama defies categorizing. Reaney's plays are a combination of symbol, metaphor, chant, poetic incantation, choral speaking, improvisation, miming, and child play. Reaney depends on the concept that we, the audience, are all "children of an older growth" and his audience have responded to this expectation. The symbolic quest as the children search for truth and end in reconciliation with the adult world are the basis of Reaney's plays. Critics have called him a colonial, a rationalist and internationalist, a rabid nationalist, a symbolist, and a poet with the myth of coherence who is yet able to say something in an age of the random. Of his poetry, The Canadian Encyclopedia says: "Reaney's poetry, collected in Poems (1972), has earned him a reputation as an erudite poet at once deriving structures from metaphor, mythology, and a cosmopolitan literary tradition while deeply rooted in a regional sense of place." Reaney's fiction of the 1940s and 1950s (collected in the 1994 book The Box Social and Other Stories, was "influential in establishing the style of writing that has since become known as ‘Southern Ontario Gothic’. Margaret Atwood has remarked that ‘without "The Bully", my fiction would have followed other paths'.... Playing sophisticated games by switching voice, he achieves a kind of ‘magic realism’, often through the distorted perspective and sense of disproportion of his child narrators."

• The Red Heart. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1949. • A Suit of Nettles. Toronto, Macmillan, 1958. Porcupine's Quill, 2010. • Twelve Letters to a Small Town. Toronto: Ryerson, 1962. • The Dance of Death at London, Ontario. London, ON: Alphabet, 1963. • Poems. Toronto: New Press, 1972. • Selected Shorter Poems Germaine Warkenton ed. Erin, ON: Porcepic, 1975. • Selected Longer Poems. Germaine Warkenton ed. Erin, ON: Porcepic, 1976. • Imprecations: The Art of Swearing. Windsor, ON: Black Moss, 1984. • Performance: Poems. Goderich, ON: Moonstone, 1990. • Souwesto Home. Stan Dragland, ed. Brick Books, 2005. 9781894078436 • The Essential James Reaney. Brian Bartlett, ed. Porcupine's Quill, 2009).

• The Killdeer and Other Plays. Toronto: Macmillan, 1962. • Names and Nicknames (1963) Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1978. • Geography Match (1967) Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1978. • Ignoramus (1967) Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1978. • Colours in the Dark (Talonbooks, 1969) | • Masks of Childhood. Toronto: New Press, 1972. • Listen to the Wind. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1972. • Apple Butter and Other Plays for Children. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 1973. • Wacousta! Wingham, ON: Jubilee, 1974. Erin, ON: Porcépic, 1979. • Sticks and Stones: The Donnellys, Part I Erin, ON: Porcepic, 1975. • Baldoon, with C.H. Gervais. Erin, ON: Porcupine's Quill, 1976. • The St. Nicholas Hotel, Wm. Donnelly, Prop: The Donnellys, Part II. Erin ON: Porcepic, 1976., • Handcuffs: The Donnellys, Part III. Erin, ON: Porcepic, 1977. • The Donnellys. Erin, ON: Porcepic, 1977. • The Plays of James Reaney. ECW P, 1977. • The Dismissal drama. (Erin, ON: Press Porcépic/Beach Holme Publishers, 1978. • Gyroscope Toronto: Playwrights Canada Press, 1983. • King Whistle! (1980) — about the Stratford General Strike of 1933 • Plays of James Reaney. ECW P, 1985. • Lewis Carroll's Alice Through the Looking Glass adapted for the stage. Erin, ON: Porcupine's Quill, 1994. • Scripts: Librettos for Operas and Other Musical Works John Beckwith, ed. Toronto: Coach House Books, 2004. • Reaney Days in the West Room. (drama — 7 plays) David Ferry, ed. (Playwrights Canada Press, 2009)

• "The Box Social," Liberty (Toronto), July 19, 1947. • The Boy with an R in His Hand. Toronto: Macmillan, 1965. Erin, ON: Porcupine's Quill, 1980. Juvenile. • Take the Big Picture. Erin, ON: Porcupine's Quill, 1986. Juvenile. • The Box Social & Other Stories Erin, ON: Porcupine's Quill, 1996.

• Halloween (Black Moss Press, 1976) • 14 Barrels from Sea to Sea. Erin, ON: Press Porcepic, 1977.,

• Major Plays of the Canadian Theatre, 1934-1984 (Irwin,1984) • Modern Canadian Plays (Talonbooks,1985) Except where noted, Bibliography from JamesReaney.com.