The Unnatural and Accidental Women

Front Cover
Talonbooks, 2005 - Drama - 127 pages

The Unnatural and Accidental Women is a surrealist dramatization of a thirty-year murder case involving many mysterious deaths in the "Skid Row" area of Vancouver. All the victims were found dead with a blood-alcohol reading far beyond safe levels, and all were last seen in the company of Gilbert Paul Jordan, who frequented the city's bars preying on primarily middle-aged Native women. The coroner's reports listed the cause of death of many of these women as "unnatural and accidental."

Marie Clements reconstructs the lives of these women as shaped by lost connections--to loved ones, to the land, to a way of life--lives of at times desperate, at times tender yearning for ties of communication, belonging and shelter gone dead. These are precariously vulnerable lives, so easily drawn to their end by the heat and light of a flame, lives that thirst for an end of searching in forgetfulness.

From inside the book

Contents

Section 1
5
Section 2
9
Section 3
66
Copyright

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About the author (2005)

Marie Clements is an award-winning Métis performer, playwright, and director whose work has been presented on stages across Canada, the United States, and Europe. She is the founder of urban ink productions, a Vancouver-based First Nations production company that creates, develops and produces Aboriginal and multi-cultural works of theatre, dance, music, film and video.Clements was invited to the prestigious Festival de Theatre des Ameriques in 2001 for Urban Tattoo and in 2002 for Burning Vision. In 2002, she worked in the writing department of the television series Da Vinci's Inquest. A fellowship award from the BC Film Commission enabled her to develop the film adaptation of her stage play, The Unnatural and Accidental Women. She is also a regular contributor on CBC Radio. Clements writes, or, perhaps more accurately, composes, with an urbane, incisive and sophisticated intellect; her refined artistry is deeply rooted in the particulars of her place, time and history. The world premiere of Copper Thunderbird is the first time Canada's National Arts Centre has produced the work of a First Nations playwright on its main stage.

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