John Lazarus

Award-Winning Playwright, Screenwriter, Teacher, and Adjudicator.

Author of the new book Two Ways About It: The Inside and Outside of Playwriting

John Lazarus has written more than 50 produced full-length and short plays. In the 1990s, he founded the playwriting program at Vancouver’s Studio 58, and then went on to teach drama full-time at Queen’s University. He has also taught at the National Theatre School and the Vancouver Film School. Two Ways About It is his book on the art of playwriting.

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Selected Plays
BABEL RAP
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Dreaming and Duelling
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On Stupidity

February 1, 2025

“My heart is broken in the face of the stupidity of my species.” – Joni Mitchell, 2007 Globally, we are all facing a crisis which is both the first we have ever faced all together as a species and also the first that threatens the extinction of humanity – and our almost universal response is to find ways to accelerate making it worse. In Europe, Putin continues to make war on Ukraine on the patently false grounds that they started it; many Russians believe him. In the Middle East, Netanyahu and his people continue to flatten Palestine,* guaranteeing generations to come of Palestinians who will, or already do, despise Israel with all their being – while he offers the rationale that he’s destroying Hamas; many Israelis believe him. Closer to home, Trump and his multibillionaires – sorry, never mind, I only have limited space for this blog – but as has recently been proved, many Americans believe him. And here at home, Trudeau quits as Prime Minister and, to delay the election, prorogues Parliament so that our national leaders cannot do their jobs – just at the moment of the first existential threat ever posed to Canada by the U.S.:

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