Jordan Tannahill is a Canadian author, playwright, filmmaker, and theatre director. His novels and plays have been translated into twelve languages, and honoured with a number of prizes including two Governor General's Literary Awards."Thomas King wins Governor General’s award for fiction"
''

The Globe and Mail ''The Globe and Mail'' is a Canadian newspaper printed in five cities in western and central Canada. With a weekly readership of approximately 2 million in 2015, it is Canada's most widely read newspaper on weekdays and Saturdays, although it ...

'', November 18, 2014. His debut novel, ''Liminal'', was honoured with France's 2021 Prix des Jeunes Libraires. His second novel, ''The Listeners'' was a Canadian bestseller, and was shortlisted for the 2021

Giller Prize The Giller Prize (sponsored as the Scotiabank Giller Prize), is a literary award given to a Canadian author of a novel or short story collection published in English (including translation) the previous year, after an annual juried competition b ...

. Tannahill has been described as "the enfant terrible of Canadian Theatre" by

Libération ''Libération'' (), popularly known as ''Libé'' (), is a daily newspaper in France, founded in Paris by Jean-Paul Sartre and Serge July in 1973 in the wake of the protest movements of May 1968. Initially positioned on the far-left of France' ...

and

The Walrus ''The Walrus'' is an independent, non-profit Canadian media organization. It is multi-platform and produces an 8-issue-per-year magazine and online editorial content that includes current affairs, fiction, poetry, and podcasts, a national s ...

, "one of Canada's most extraordinary artists" by

CBC Arts CBC Arts (french: Radio-Canada Arts) is the division of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that creates and curates written articles, short documentaries, non-fiction series and interactive projects that represent the excellence of Canada's div ...

, and "widely celebrated as one of Canada’s most accomplished young playwrights, filmmakers and all-round multidisciplinary artists" by the

Toronto Star The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. The newspaper is the country's largest daily newspaper by circulation. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and par ...

. In 2019,

named Tannahill as one of sixty-nine LGBTQ Canadians, living or deceased, who has shaped the country's history.

Early life

Tannahill was born and raised in

Ottawa Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the c ...

, where he attended Canterbury High School. He moved to

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

at the age of eighteen, and began making short films and staging experimental plays, often with non-traditional collaborators like night-shift workers, frat boys, preteens, and employees of Toronto's famed

Honest Ed's Honest Ed's was a landmark discount store in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was named for its proprietor, Ed Mirvish, who opened the store in 1948 and oversaw its operations for almost 60 years until his death in 2007. The store continued to operat ...

discount emporium.

Theatre and performance

Tannahill's plays frequently explore the nature of belief, queer identity, power relations, and the body as a political subject. His work has been performed across North America and Europe, particularly in Germany, where several of his plays are in state theater repertory. He received the

Governor General's Award for English-language drama The Governor General's Award for English-language drama honours excellence in Canadian English-language playwriting. The award was created in 1981 when the Governor General's Award for English-language poetry or drama was divided. Because the awa ...

in 2014 for ''Age of Minority: Three Solo Plays'', and again in 2018 for his plays ''Botticelli in the Fire & Sunday in Sodom''. His play ''Concord Floral'' was a finalist for the award in 2016. He has been nominated for five Outstanding New Play

Dora Mavor Moore Award The Dora Mavor Moore Award (also known as the Dora Award) is an award presented annually by the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts which honours theatre, dance and opera productions in Toronto. Named after Dora Mavor Moore, who helped estab ...

s, winning in 2013 for his

live-stream Livestreaming is streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcast in real-time over the internet. It is often referred to simply as streaming. Non-live media such as video-on-demand, vlogs, and YouTube videos are technically streamed, but n ...

ed monologue ''rihannaboi95'', and in 2015 for ''Concord Floral''. Tannahill's production of Sheila Heti's play ''All Our Happy Days Are Stupid,'' which he directed with collaborator Erin Brubacher, premiered in 2014 at Videofag, more than a decade after Heti first began the script. Heti's struggle to write the play is one of the central plot-lines in her bestselling novel ''How Should a Person Be?''. The production, which featured original songs by Dan Bejar, was remounted at

The Kitchen The Kitchen is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary avant-garde performance and experimental art institution located at 512 West 19th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It was foun ...

in New York City in 2015. In 2017, Tannahill's play ''Late Company'' transferred to London's West End. In the same year, his virtual reality performance ''Draw Me Close'', co-produced by London's National Theatre and the

National Film Board of Canada The National Film Board of Canada (NFB; french: Office national du film du Canada (ONF)) is Canada's public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary fi ...

, premiered at the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...

. Tannahill's work in contemporary dance includes choreographing and performing with Christopher House in ''Marienbad'' for the Toronto Dance Theatre in 2016; and writing the text for ''Xenos'' in 2018, and ''Outwitting the Devil'' in 2019, two shows by choreographer Akram Khan, which have toured internationally to venues including

Sadler's Wells Theatre Sadler's Wells Theatre is a performing arts venue in Clerkenwell, London, England located on Rosebery Avenue next to New River Head. The present-day theatre is the sixth on the site since 1683. It consists of two performance spaces: a 1,500-sea ...

Festival d'Avignon The ''Festival d'Avignon'', or Avignon Festival, is an annual arts festival held in the French city of Avignon every summer in July in the courtyard of the Palais des Papes as well as in other locations of the city. Founded in 1947 by Jean Vila ...

, and the

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 milli ...

Now (newspaper) ''Now'' (styled as ''NOW''), also known as ''NOW Magazine'' is an online publication based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Throughout most of its existence, ''Now'' was a free alternative weekly newspaper. Physical publication of ''Now'' was suspe ...

listed both ''Marienbad'' and ''Xenos'' as Top 10 dance shows of the 2010s decade. Tannahill's book of essays on theatre, ''Theatre of the Unimpressed: In Search of Vital Drama'', first published in 2015, was called "essential reading for anybody interested in the state of contemporary theatre and performance" by ''

''. In 2022,

Playbill ''Playbill'' is an American monthly magazine for theatergoers. Although there is a subscription issue available for home delivery, most copies of ''Playbill'' are printed for particular productions and distributed at the door as the show's p ...

listed the book as one of fourteen essential books on theatre.

Novels

''Liminal''

''Liminal'' is a work of

autofiction In literary criticism, autofiction is a form of fictionalized autobiography. Autofiction combines two mutually inconsistent narrative forms, namely autobiography and fiction. An author may decide to recount their life in the third person, to mo ...

which follows the character Jordan as he reckons with the nature of consciousness and the abject, precipitated by the sight of his mother's sleeping - or possibly dead - body. In her review of the novel, Martha Schabas of ''

'' wrote "Tannahill's lushly intelligent debut... captures something illuminating and undefinable about the present moment; it speaks in the code and cadences of the late 2010s and paints an incisive portrait of the demographic we call millennial", and compared it to the work of authors

Ben Lerner Benjamin S. Lerner (born February 4, 1979) is an American poet, novelist, essayist, and critic. He has been a Fulbright Scholar, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, a finalist for the National Book Award, a finalist for the National Bo ...

Rachel Cusk Rachel Cusk (born 8 February 1967) is a British novelist and writer. Childhood and education Cusk was born in Saskatoon to British parents in 1967, the second of four children with an older sister and two younger brothers, and spent much of h ...

and

Karl Ove Knausgaard Karl may refer to: People * Karl (given name), including a list of people and characters with the name * Karl der Große, commonly known in English as Charlemagne * Karl Marx, German philosopher and political writer * Karl of Austria, last Austrian ...

. In

Le Devoir ''Le Devoir'' (, "Duty") is a French-language newspaper published in Montreal and distributed in Quebec and throughout Canada. It was founded by journalist and politician Henri Bourassa in 1910. ''Le Devoir'' is one of few independent large-c ...

, Anne-Frédérique Hébert-Dolbec called the novel "a prodigious odyssey that tests the limits of reason and materiality." ''Liminal'' won the 2021 Prix des Jeunes Libraires.

''The Listeners''

''The Listeners'' follows Claire Devon, a woman whose life and beliefs are irrevocably altered after she starts hearing The Hum. The book was a Canadian national bestseller, and was shortlisted for the 2021

. In their citation, the Giller jury called the novel "a masterful interrogation of the body, as well as the desperate violence that undergirds our lives in the era of social media, conspiracies, isolation and environmental degradation." It forms the basis of an opera by composer Missy Mazzoli and librettist

Royce Vavrek Royce Vavrek is a Canadian-born Brooklyn-based librettist, playwright, dance scenarist, musical theatre writer and filmmaker known for his collaborations with composers David T. Little, Missy Mazzoli, Mikael Karlsson, Ricky Ian Gordon, Paola P ...

, which premiered at the

Norwegian National Opera The Norwegian National Opera and Ballet ( no, Den Norske Opera & Ballett, links=no) is a Norwegian opera company and ballet company. The first fully professional company each for opera and ballet in Norway and the only such professional organisati ...

in 2022.

Videofag

In 2012, in collaboration with his then-partner William Ellis, Jordan founded and ran Videofag, an alternative arts space operated out of a defunct barbershop in Toronto's

Kensington Market Kensington Market is a distinctive multicultural neighbourhood in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The Market is an older neighbourhood and one of the city's most well-known. In November 2006, it was designated a National Historic Site of Ca ...

. The space doubled as the couple's home and became an influential hub for counterculture in the city, until its closure in 2016."Videofags: A new queer art space in Kensington - ready to blow your mind"
'' fab'', October 17, 2012.

Political views

Tannahill is an anti-monarchist, and has written about the need for Canada to sever ties with the British Crown. He is also a critic of Brexit. On November 23, 2018, Tannahill read the entirety of

Judith Butler Judith Pamela Butler (born February 24, 1956) is an American philosopher and gender theorist whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminism, queer theory, and literary theory. In 1993, Butler b ...

's ''

Gender Trouble ''Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity'' (1990; second edition 1999) is a book by the philosopher Judith Butler in which the author argues that gender is a kind of improvised performance. Summary Butler criticizes one of t ...

'' over nine hours outside the

Hungarian Parliament Building The Hungarian Parliament Building ( hu, Országház , which translates to "House of the Country" or "House of the Nation"), also known as the Parliament of Budapest after its location, is the seat of the National Assembly of Hungary, a notable ...

in protest of Hungarian Prime Minister

Viktor Orbán Viktor Mihály Orbán (; born 31 May 1963) is a Hungarian politician who has served as prime minister of Hungary since 2010, previously holding the office from 1998 to 2002. He has presided over Fidesz since 1993, with a brief break between ...

's decision to revoke accreditation and funding for gender studies programs in the country. On April 4, 2019, Tannahill and three collaborators staged a protest action during high tea at

The Dorchester The Dorchester is a five-star luxury hotel on Park Lane and Deanery Street in London, to the east of Hyde Park. It is one of the world's most prestigious and expensive hotels. The Dorchester opened on 18 April 1931, and it still retains its ...

Hotel. The action was in response to

Brunei Brunei ( , ), formally Brunei Darussalam ( ms, Negara Brunei Darussalam, Jawi: , ), is a country located on the north coast of the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia. Apart from its South China Sea coast, it is completely surrounded by th ...

's proposed introduction of laws that make homosexual sex and adultery punishable by stoning to death. The

Dorchester Collection Dorchester Collection is a luxury hotel operator owned by the Brunei Investment Agency (BIA), an arm of the Ministry of Finance of Brunei. Dorchester Collection owns and manages nine luxury five star hotels: The Dorchester (London), The Beverly ...

is a luxury hotel operator owned by the Brunei Investment Agency. Video documentation of the protest action, and Tannahill's forceful removal from the hotel, went viral soon after it was posted online."Gay rights activists infiltrate Dorchester Hotel in protest over Brunei death penalty"
''Metro'', April 6, 2019.

Bibliography

Fiction

*''The Listeners'', 2021 *''Liminal'', 2018

Plays

*''Is My Microphone On?'', 2021 *''Declarations'', 2018 *''Botticelli in the Fire'', 2016 *''Sunday in Sodom'', 2016 *''Concord Floral'', 2014 *''Late Company'', 2013 *''rihannaboi95'', 2013 *''Peter Fechter: 59 Minutes'', 2013 *''Post Eden'', 2010 *''Get Yourself Home Skyler James'', 2010

Non-fiction

*''The Videofag Book'', 2018 *''Theatre of the Unimpressed: In Search of Vital Drama'', 2015

References

External links

*
Suburban Beast
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Tannahill, Jordan 21st-century Canadian dramatists and playwrights Artists from Ottawa Artists from Toronto Canadian theatre directors Canadian video artists Canadian multimedia artists Film directors from Ottawa Film directors from Toronto Canadian LGBT artists LGBT dramatists and playwrights LGBT film directors LGBT theatre directors Canadian gay writers Gay artists Writers from Ottawa Writers from Toronto Living people Governor General's Award-winning dramatists 1988 births Canadian male dramatists and playwrights 21st-century Canadian male writers