Swipe by Gordon Pengilly

Frank Glenfield in Swipe, Walterdale Theatre, Edmonton

Comedy/ 7 Characters, 6 Men, 1 Woman/ Full Length, 75 minutes

Synopsis: This charming fantasy is set in a lagoon where the paddlewheel steamer Empress lies wrecked. Chief thief Peck Woodstick rules over the other tramps and his young apprentice Rooster. When Peck reports that their mystical old friend Clancy will finally return from the stars to bring them all “transcendence,” expectations mount until Peck is exposed for the liar that he is. After the tramps deal with Peck in revenge for his deception, Rooster rekindles Clancy’s legend and keeps the myth alive.

“A marvelously lusty flight of fancy . . . escapist, absurdist,
and absolutely entertaining.” –Edmonton Journal

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Performance rights must be secured before production
Contact information: Amateur and professional rights:
Gordon Pengilly
401-27th Ave. NW
Calgary, AB, Canada
T2M 2H7
Ph.: (403) 277-6572
E-mail: gdpengilly@gmail.com

About the Playwright: Gordon Pengilly has written more than 50 plays for TV, film, radio and the stage. His work, including Seeds, Swipe, Metastasis, Yours ’til The Moon Falls Down, Tom Three Persons, Tom Form And The Speed Of Love, Contraption and They Don’t Call Them Farmers Anymore, has been produced across Canada and abroad. His one-act playThe Work Play, which premiered in New York at the Actor’s Loft in 2000 before being produced in Japan in 2002, was made into a short film seen at Fourth Wall Screenings in 2005.Gordon is also one of the most prolific radio dramatists in Canada. In 1989, CBC selectedThe Ballad Of An Existential Cowboy as one its Best-of-Decade. In The Middle Of Town Stands The Dreamland was nominated for a Peabody Award in 1993 and rebroadcast in Australia, and Seeing In the Dark received the 2007 BBC International Radio Drama Prize and was broadcast on the World Service.Gordon has been resident playwright for theatres and institutions in Edmonton, Calgary, Banff, Red Deer, Toronto and Fredericton and routinely runs workshops for Alberta Playwrights Network. His first collection of plays, Metastasis And Other Plays, published by NeWest Press received the 2009 W.O. Mitchell Book Prize.

Swipe was first produced as The Apprentice of Swipe at Walterdale Playhouse, Edmonton, Alberta in May 1981, and first professionally produced by the NDWT Company, Toronto, in December, 1981.

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