How far will humanity go in its quest for power? Why do we continually seek to annihilate each other through war, perpetuating the mistakes of our forebears? Larry Tremblay's award-winning play War Cantata confronts these questions as it looks at ways one generation transmits the impulse for violence to the next -- and the consequences for children of this brutal inheritance. Without focusing on a particular soldier or battle, Tremblay's intense, choral text builds with the rhythmic power of words to expose war's destructive spiral out of hatred. Tremblay further interrogates the place of children in contemporary society in Child Object. This spare choral work stages a poetic discourse about the children we want to have -- want to possess, to buy, to transform -- like so many consumer goods that, inevitabley, fail to satisfy our society's obsessive pursuit of perfection.

Two plays. Translation of: Cantate de guerre and L'enfant matière.

War cantata / translated by Keith Turnbull -- Child object / translated by Chantal Bilodeau.