Strawberries in January: an appropriate translation does not guarantee a production that captures the essence of the play
Evelyne de la Chenelière, born in 1975, is something of a prodigy. She has written nearly fifteen plays all of which have been produced, and in 2006, she won a Governor General’s Award for her play Désordre public (2006). In 2007, the French theatre of the National Arts Centre brought in a production of her very moving monologue Bashir Lazhar (which is apparently being made into a film at this moment) about an Algerian immigrant who comes to Canada, finds a job as a teacher and tries to explain to his students, – i.e. the audience – the problems of an outsider such as himself trying to integrate into this country.