One Foot In, One Foot Out: An Interview with Patrick Friesen
April 6, 2021, interviewed by Rob Taylor
Patrick Friesen’s new play, A Short History of Crazy Bone, staged by Theatre Projects Manitoba, Won Winnipeg Theatre Awards Outstanding New Work.
“A thick haze hangs in the air as the audience enters the theatre for A Short History of Crazy Bone, a new play seeing its premiere in a Theatre Projects Manitoba production.
That seems appropriate — what follows for the next 90 minutes exists in the hazy world between dream, reality, memory and utter fiction. Determining which of those we’re hearing or seeing at any point can be confounding, but is also what ultimately makes Crazy Bone such a compelling piece.” —
“Steinbach-born poet-playwright Patrick Friesen’s “stage poem” A Short History of Crazy Bone is a portrait of a crazy woman… with the understanding that “crazy” is a matter of perspective.”—
Review of Songen
“If we live in a country that values poetry, we must value Patrick Friesen. He has now unleashed a choir of voices in his new collection, songen, consisting of 87 poems, all of them one sentence long, separated by commas, and between eight and fourteen lines in length.” — Danny Peart, BC Booklook (read entire review)
Patrick Friesen 