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Who Writes This Stuff?

A look at the playwrights behind Domino's 65th season.

Born in London in 1947, David McGillivray (The Farndale Avenue Housing Estate Townswomen's Guild Dramatic Society Murder Mystery) worked as a film critic for Monthly Film Bulletin and Time Out before turning to screenwriting and later to writing for the stage. After writing screenplays for a number of low-budget British sex and horror films, McGillivray teamed up with Walter Zerlin, Jr. to produce the Farndale plays. Zerlin was born in 1950 in Guildford, U.K. He studied law at King's College London, and became a barrister. He and McGillivray met while working on an amateur theatre production in 1972. Aside from the Farndale series, Zerlin wrote a few plays of his own, the best known of which was Running Around the Stage Like a Lunatic, in which he played all 17 roles, and which won an Edinburgh Fringe Festival Award.

Ernest Thompson (On Golden Pond) was born in Vermont in 1949. He wrote the play West Side Waltz, as well as the screenplay for the film Sweet Hearts Dance, the television film Take Me Home Again and a group of 12 short plays called The Penis Responds. He has also acted and directed. His directing credits include a 1995 television version of On Golden Pond.

Barbara Robinson (The Best Christmas Pageant Ever) was born in 1927 in Ohio. Best known as an author of children's books, particularly the one on which the play is based, she also published a number of short stories in magazines such as Redbook, McCall's and Ladies Home Journal.

Agatha Christie (Murder on the Nile) was born Agatha Miller in Torquay, U.K., in 1890. She wrote her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in response to a challenge from her sister Clara. It was published in 1920. Altogether she published 66 detective novels, 15 collections of short stories, 19 plays (many of which are adapted from her novels), as well as an autobiography and Come, Tell Me How You Live about her time in Syria and Iraq with her second husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan. The Guinness Book of World Records calls Christie the best-selling novelist of all time, with total sales of around four billion copies. She died in Torbay, U.K., in 1976.

Born in 1913 in Thamesville, Ont., Robertson Davies (At My Heart's Core) was one of Canada's best-known authors. His education included three years at Queen's University, after which he completed a degree at Balliol College, Oxford, and worked briefly in theatre in Britain before returning to Canada and becoming literary editor of Saturday Night magazine. He then became editor, and later publisher, of the Peterborough Examiner. He played a major role in launching the Stratford Shakespearian Festival, and was the first Master of Massey College at the University of Toronto. He is best known for his novels, including What's Bred in the Bone, World of Wonders, Fifth Business and The Cunning Man.

Dale Wasserman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) was born in Wisconsin. Orphaned at the age of nine, he lived in a state orphanage before spending his adolescence riding the rails and sleeping rough in Los Angeles. He started working in theatre at 19 as a self-taught lighting designer, director and producer. Believing he could write better plays than the ones he was directing, he became a writer. Besides One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, he wrote the book for the musical Man of La Mancha as well as the screenplay for the film version, the plays How I Saved the Whole Damn World and Boy on Blacktop Road, and a number of screenplays and television scripts. Wasserman died in 2008.

Since graduating from Drama at Queen's University in 1983, John Corrigan (The Mollycoddlers) has been acting like an adult and teacher—both to mostly good reviews. The Mollycoddlers, his first play, premiered at Thousand Islands Playhouse in 2009. He co-wrote the 2010 Playhouse production of Up the River. Island Getaway was first produced by Lennox Community Theatre in 2013, then by Domino in 2015. When not writing, John can be seen playing hockey or perhaps on stage at Domino.