In The Noam Chomsky Lectures–an angry, funny, political tirade–Brooks and Verdecchia challenged audiences to wake up. With Insomnia, the duo’s latest collaboration and a much darker show, awakening has become a curse. John is a man skeptical to the point of tyranny. So rigorously demanding of the world and himself that he has lost the power to sleep, he is driving himself and his wife to distraction.
News & Reviews
“Insomnia turns Chomsky’s politics inward–at what point, Insomnia asks, do healthy skepticism and reasonable doubt turn into paranoia and paralysis? Unfolding in a series of ever more surreal vignettes, Insomnia employs a powerful brand of non-linear, disorienting story-telling that skillfully focuses an audience’s attention.” —NOW Magazine
“… an impressively theatrical nightcap with which to neurotically toast the millennium.” —Toronto Star
About the Authors
Daniel Brooks is an accomplished director, writer, actor, and teacher, considered to be one of Canada’s foremost theatre artists. He has been co-director of the Augusta Company and da da camera, and Artistic Director of Toronto’s Necessary Angel Theatre Company. Daniel’s plays include The Return of Pokey Jones, The Noam Chomsky Lectures (with Guillermo Verdecchia, The Lorca Play (with Daniel MacIvor, Here Lies Henry (with MacIvor,) Insomnia (with Verdecchia,) This is What Happens Next (with MacIvor,) The Aleph (with Diego Matamoros,) 40 Days and Forty Nights (with Kim Collier,) and The Full Light of Day (with Collier). Brooks has won several awards, including the Chalmers Award, the Dora Mavor Moore Award, the Edinburgh Fringe First Award, and the Capital Critics Circle Award. In 2001, he received the first Siminovitch Prize in Theatre.
Guillermo Verdecchia is a writer, director, and actor whose work has been seen and heard across Canada and around the world. The author or co-author of, among other works, Fronteras Americanus, The Noam Chomsky Lectures (with Daniel Brooks), and A Line in the Sand (with Marcus Youssef), he is a recipient of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama and a four-time winner of the Chalmers Canadian Play Award, as well as a recipient of Doras, Jessies, and various film festival awards.
