This translation was made possible by a grant from Canada Council for the Arts.

Walls

By Mishka Lavigne
Translated to English by David Gagnon Walker
Translated from Murs

A road trip through an upside down world.

After an epidemic that decimates almost the entire population, a group of survivors wander the landscape. Siblings Eric and Zoe leave their home city for Portland, Maine, to find out if their father is alive. They’re being followed by Sara, unstable and armed with a rifle. Somewhere down the road, a mysterious visionary struggles to understand his place in this new world. Danger lurks around every corner. Nightmares won’t let them sleep. What’s left of humanity when society collapses? What can we cling to when the world falls apart?

Meet the Playwright & Translator

About the playwright

Mishka Lavigne

Mishka Lavigne (she / her) is a playwright, screenwriter, and literary translator. Her plays have been developed and performed in Canada, the United States, Europe, Australia, Haiti, and Mexico.

Her play Havre, created at La Troupe du Jour (Saskatoon) received the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2019. Copeaux, produced by Théâtre de Dehors (Ottawa) was awarded the same prize in 2021, as well as the Prix Jacques-Poirier. Murs, initially produced as a podcast by Transistor Médias, Créations In Vivo and the Théâtre Populaire d’Acadie, received rave reviews in France and will be produced for the stage in 2023.

Mishka also writes in English. Her play Albumen, produced by TACTICS in 2019 (Ottawa), received the QWF Playwriting Prize and her play Shorelines was staged (TACTICS) in 2023.

As a translator of both French and English, Mishka has more than twenty credited translations of theatre, prose and poetry.

About the translator

David Gagnon Walker

David Gagnon Walker is a writer, performer, and translator born in Edmonton and based in Toronto. His work has been performed and developed in cities across Canada, and through residencies in Sweden, Finland, France, Australia, and the USA. His awards include the Playwrights Guild of Canada RBC Emerging Playwright Award for The Big Ship, first prize in the Wildfire National Playwriting Competition for Pink Moon, and the Playwrights’ Workshop Montréal Cole Foundation Mentorship for Emerging Translators. Other plays include Premium Content (Major Matt Mason Collective/High Performance Rodeo), The Last Children (Curtain Razors), and the English translation of Gabrielle Chapdelaine’s The Retreat (Imago Theatre). David is Artistic Producer of Strange Victory Performance, a collaboration with composer and video designer Tori Morrison, through which he has been touring experimental and interactive performance projects since 2020. He holds an M.A. in Performance Studies from the University of Toronto and is a graduate of the playwriting program at the National Theatre School of Canada.

Related Projects & News 

New Translation Commissions: And if one night

New Translation Commissions: And if one night

By Lisa L’Heureux | Translated Mishka Lavigne

In a grey apartment building, in a fragmented dream, 4 characters dive into the hushed zones of human intimacy. Recipient of the Prix littéraire Trillium and the Prix Rideau.

“Modern and poetic…four characters whose desire for true human contact seeks to transcend the virtuality of screens” – ici.radio-canada.ca