Author Description

Atlantis is about ecstatic love, the kind that seems at once holy and hedonistic, and Hunter allows us to touch, to see, and to remember that it is within our reach. -- Stephen Shipper, Artistic Director (Manitoba Theatre Centre)As the blue waters and white villas of the island of Santorini mingle in the bright sunlight and subtle shadows of a Greek paradise, so too do the lives of two solitary characters as, through a series of alternating monologues, they test the thread of spiritual union and the deep physicality of their bond, As Hunter's two lovers -- Ben, a middle-aged Canadian man who carves, and Mircea, an enchanting villager who inspires and beguiles him -circle each other with their words, never interacting or acknowledging the other's presence on stage, two stories begin to merge -- two stories of how the intensity of deep sensuality can reveal an unearthliness which is as ancient and multilayered as myth. In their individual ways, Ben and Mircea reveal the course their love takes until, finally, the lost city of Atlantis is the fitting metaphor for the sensuality of pure ecstatic love, From one of the foremost dramatists writing in Canada today, Atlantis is yet another highly original drama by Maureen Hunter, the author of Transit of Venus, Footprints on the Moon and Beautiful Lake Winnipeg.