Dave Carley
Dave Carley is a Canadian playwright. He has written for stage, radio and television. His plays have had over 450 productions, and have been produced across Canada and the United States, and in other countries. His plays have won, or been nominated for, a number of awards, including the Governor General's Award (Writing with our Feet, finalist), The Chalmers Award, The Dora Award, The Arthur Miller Award (University of Michigan) and the New York International Radio Festival Award. He was a founder of Friends of Freddy, an association for the appreciation of the Freddy the Pig series of books of Walter Brooks. He was an Editor of The Kawartha Sun, the founding editor of the Playwrights Guild of Canada magazine, CanPlay, and also editor of Scirocco Drama in the late 1990s.
Before that, beginning in 1990, Carley was the radio drama script editor at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and he continues to write for the CBC. He was script editor for the Wendy Lill drama series Backbencher, and wrote three episodes for the second season, which began broadcast in January 2011.
Carley was born in Peterborough, Ontario, where he attended Queen Alexandra Public School and Adam Scott Collegiate. He received a Bachelor of Arts from The University of Toronto (University College) and an LL.B. from Queen's University in Kingston. He is an active member in a number of organizations, including Playwrights Guild of Canada, and Amnesty International as well as serving as Chair of the Dance and Opera Divisions for the Toronto's Dora Mavor Moore Awards.
Dave was the winner of the 2012 Maggie Bassett Award, which is given for significant and sustained contribution to theatre in Ontario.
Dave continues to write for the stage and a new work about the death penalty, Twelve Hours, premiered in March, 2014 at the Garden Theatre in Columbus, Ohio. The Columbus Dispatch called it "90 minutes of gripping theatre". Twelve Hours was published by Scirocco Press in Spring, 2015. Most recently, Dave's stage adaptation of A Splinter of the Heart, the novel by Al Purdy, was premiered by the Festival Players of Prince Edward County in August 2016. Dave is currently completing a new play, Canadian Rajah, based on the life of Esca Brooke Daykin, eldest son of Charles Brooke, the second "White Rajah of Sarawak".
The brother of Gord Carley, author of Surviving Adversity, Dave Carley lives in Toronto.
Selected Plays
- Canadian Rajah (2016)
- A Splinter in the Heart (2016); adaptation of Al Purdy novel
- Twelve Hours (2014)
- American Detour (2011)
- Niels Ebbesen (2007) (by Kaj Munk; new English translation and adaptation, with Arense Lund)
- Lucky (2006)
- Conservatives in Love (2006)
- The Final Hour (2005) (Written with Glenda MacFarlane)
- The Last Liberal (2004)
- Test Drive (2002)
- Orchidelirium (2001)(Finalist, Dora Mavor Moore Award, Best New Play)
- The Edible Woman (2000) (Based on the novel by Margaret Atwood)
- Walking on Water (1999)
- Two Ships Passing (1998)
- A View From The Roof (1996) (Based on stories by Helen Weinzweig) (Finalist, Dora Mavor Moore Award, Best New Play; Finalist, Chalmers Award)
- After You (1995) (Premiered as 'Kawartha' at Alberta Theatre Projects)
- Into (1993) and (2006) (Finalist; Dora Mavor Moore Award, Best New Play)
- Taking Liberties (1991) (Finalist; Dora Mavor Moore Award, Best New Play); (Finalist; Chalmers Award)
- Writing With Our Feet (1990) (Finalist; Governor General's Award for Drama)
- Midnight Madness (1988)
- Hedges (1985)