Hannah Moscovitch

Hannah Moscovitch exploded onto the Canadian scene in 2007 with her first full-length play East of Berlin. Hailed by the press as an “angel,” a “sensation,” and a “wunderkind,” Moscovitch has more than fulfilled this early promise, pushing herself with each subsequent work to deeper levels of emotional and intellectual complexity. While several of her plays are set in her native Ottawa, including What a Young Wife Ought to Know (2015) and Little One (2013), Moscovitch frequently turns her gaze outward, to other locations and other times. East of Berlin (2007), for instance, moves from Germany to Paraguay and back again as it tells the story of a Nazi war criminal’s son. Similarly, This is War (2013) examines the engagement of Canadian forces in the volatile Panjwaii district of Afghanistan. In all of her work, Moscovitch focuses on the painful (and sometimes dangerous) ways that the past ruptures the present, and the difficult questions about responsibility and redemption that result. Moscovitch, a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada and Playwright-in-Residence at Toronto's Tarragon Theatre, was recently awarded the Trillium Book Award, the first time in that prize’s twenty-seven year history that it had been awarded to a playwright.