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
Related Projects & News
International Translation Workshop: And if one night
Quebecois Quantum
with Presence Theatre (London, UK)
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
Pan Canadian New Translation Workshop: Haven
HAVRE by Mishka Lavigne (Vancouver, Montreal, Ottawa & Chicago)


