David French

David Benson French, OC (January 18, 1939 – December 5, 2010) was a Canadian playwright, most noted for his "Mercer Plays" series of Leaving Home, Of the Fields, Lately, Salt-Water Moon, 1949 and Soldier's Heart.

Early life French was born in the tiny Newfoundland outport of Coley's Point, the middle child in a family of five boys. His father, Garfield French, was a carpenter, and during World War II worked for the Eastern Air Command in Canada. After the war, David's mother, Edith, came to Ontario with the boys to join their father and the family settled in Toronto among a thriving community of Newfoundland immigrants.

French attended Rawlinson Public School, Harbord Collegiate, and Oakwood Collegiate. He was indifferent to books until Grade 8, when his English teacher, to punish him for talking in class, told French to sit down and read a book. The book David happened to pull off the shelf was Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. French says that by the time he finished reading it, he not only knew that he wanted to be a writer It also received many international productions, including an off-Broadway run. Leaving Home is taught in high schools and universities across Canada, and is one of the most familiar of Canadian plays. It was named one of the "100 Most Influential Canadian Books" by the Literary Review of Canada) and one of the "1,000 Essential Plays in the English Language" in the Oxford Dictionary of Theatre. Leaving Home introduced audiences to the Mercer family, who would come to figure largely in David's work. The Mercers, like the Frenches, were a Newfoundland family transplanted to Toronto.

Of the Fields, Lately (1973), French's sequel to Leaving Home, also produced at the Tarragon, won the Chalmers Award for 1973.

Other work The immensely popular backstage comedy Jitters (1979) has been regularly revived in Canada, and enjoyed a six-month run at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut. Other works include the memory play That Summer (1999), which opened the Blyth Festival's 25th Anniversary Season; the mystery-thriller Silver Dagger (1993), a finalist for the Arthur Ellis Award; One Crack Out (1975) a pool-hall drama produced in Toronto and off-Broadway, and the comedy The Riddle of the World (1981). All of his plays have been published and are in print. (Talonbooks and Anansi).

French also undertook translations of Miss Julie (August Strindberg), The Forest (Alexander Ostrovsky), and of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, a version of which was produced on Broadway starring Laura Linney, Ethan Hawke, Jon Voight, and Tyne Daly. French was helped by Russian scholars when preparing the latter two texts.

Works Leaving Home - 1972 Of the Fields, Lately - 1973 One Crack Out - 1975 The Seagull - 1977 Jitters - 1979 The Riddle of the World - 1981 Salt-Water Moon - 1985 (nominated for a Governor General's Award) 1949 - 1989 The Silver Dagger - 1993 That Summer - 2000 Soldier's Heart - 2003 Miss Julie - 2005