Alex may or may not be dying. Confronted with his mortality, he searches for sex and connection in hotel bars – with his wife Brit’s conflicted blessing. Little Death, the lyrical new drama from CBC Fiction Prize-winner and Dora Award-nominated playwright Daniel Karasik, is a gripping study of sexuality under extreme pressure. Tender and fierce by turns, in precise, musical language that straddles the boundary between poetic verse and dramatic prose, this play for six actors (5 F, 1 M) asks fundamental questions about marriage, fidelity, and the intimate needs of men and women.

Prior to its premiere production at Toronto’s Theatre Centre in April 2015, Little Death was developed at the Royal Court Theatre in London, UK, the Tarragon Theatre and Stratford Festival in Canada, and off-Broadway’s The New Group. Influenced by contemporary European dramatic forms, the play’s style is hybrid–it exists for the reader as a poem, yet it has an innate theatricality that calls out for full elaboration on stage.

Spare and enigmatic, Little Death allows the reader, director, actors, and audience to fill out its shadows with their own intuitions and truths. In the vein of Anne Carson’s The Beauty of the Husband and Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, the play will delight theatre fans, poetry lovers, and anyone interested in thought-provoking art about life and love, sex and death. It is a deeply felt work from one of Canada’s most exciting young talents.