Jordan Tannahill | |
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 Tannahill in 2023 | |
| Born | (1988-05-19)May 19, 1988 (age 37) Ottawa, Ontario, Canada |
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Jordan Tannahill (born May 19, 1988) is a Canadian writer and director. His novels and plays have been translated into twelve languages, and honoured with a number of prizes including twoGovernor General's Literary Awards.[1] His debut novel,Liminal, was honoured with France's 2021 Prix des Jeunes Libraires.[2] His second novel,The Listeners, made the Canadian fiction bestsellers list, and was shortlisted for the 2021Giller Prize.[3]The Listeners was adapted into a limited series, directed byJanicza Bravo, for theBBC.[4][5]
Tannahill has been described as "the enfant terrible of Canadian Theatre" byLibération[6] andThe Walrus,[7] "one of Canada's leading writers" by Helen Shaw inThe New Yorker,[8] and "widely celebrated as one of Canada's most accomplished young playwrights, filmmakers and all-round multidisciplinary artists" by theToronto Star.[9] In 2019,CBC Arts named Tannahill as one of sixty-nine LGBTQ Canadians, living or deceased, who has shaped the country's history.[10]
Tannahill was born and raised inOttawa, where he attendedCanterbury High School. He moved toToronto at the age of eighteen, and began making short films and staging experimental plays, often with non-traditional collaborators like night-shift workers, frat boys, preteens, and employees of Toronto's famedHonest Ed's discount emporium.[11][12][13][14] In his early twenties, he made several photographic and video works with artistNina Arsenault.[15][16] After living in Toronto for ten years, Tannahill moved toLondon in 2016, where he became active in the city'skink scene.[17][18]
In 2012, Tannahill and his then-boyfriend William Ellis converted a former barbershop in Toronto'sKensington Market intoVideofag, a small, multi-arts space that functioned variously as a gallery, cinema, and performance venue. Over the four years of its existence, Videofag became a hub for queer counterculture in Toronto.[19][20]
Tannahill's debut novel,Liminal, published in 2018, is a work ofautofiction which follows the author as he reckons with the nature of consciousness andthe abject, precipitated by the sight of his mother's sleeping - or possibly dead - body.[21] In her review of the novel, Martha Schabas ofThe Globe and Mail wrote "Tannahill's lushly intelligent debut... captures something illuminating and undefinable about the present moment; it speaks in the code and cadences of the late 2010s and paints an incisive portrait of the demographic we call millennial", and compared it to the work of authorsBen Lerner,Rachel Cusk andKarl Ove Knausgaard.[22] InLe Devoir, Anne-Frédérique Hébert-Dolbec called the novel "a prodigious odyssey that tests the limits of reason and materiality."[23]Liminal won the 2021 Prix des Jeunes Libraires.[24]
The Listeners, published in 2021, follows Claire Devon, a woman whose life and beliefs are irrevocably altered after she starts hearingThe Hum. The book made the Canadian national bestsellers list, and was shortlisted for the 2021Giller Prize.[25] In their citation, the Giller jury called the novel "a masterful interrogation of the body, as well as the desperate violence that undergirds our lives in the era of social media, conspiracies, isolation and environmental degradation."[26]
The Listeners was originally written as a story for a new opera by composerMissy Mazzoli and librettistRoyce Vavrek, which premiered at theNorwegian National Opera in 2022, directed byLileana Blain-Cruz.[27]Zachary Woolfe in the New York Times named the production one of the Best Classical Performances of 2024, calling it "the unmissable opera of the season",[28] whileAlex Ross ofThe New Yorker called it "mesmerizing" and declared Mazzoli "a once-in-a-generation magician of the orchestra."[29]
Tannahill adapted his novel into a limited series, produced byElement Pictures for theBBC, directed byJanicza Bravo and starringRebecca Hall.[30] The series premiered at the 2024Toronto International Film Festival,[31] and aired to critical acclaim[32][33] on BBC on November 19, 2024.
Tannahill is a regular contributor toButt (magazine),[34] and has both written and spoken openly about his experiences withescorting andkink.[35][36]
Tannahill's book of essays on theatre,Theatre of the Unimpressed: In Search of Vital Drama, first published in 2015,[37] was called "essential reading for anybody interested in the state of contemporary theatre and performance" byThe Globe and Mail.[38] In 2022,Playbill listed the book as one of fourteen essential books for theatre students.[39]
Tannahill's plays frequently explore the nature of belief, queer identity, power relations, and the body as a political subject.[40] His work has been performed across North America and Europe, particularly in Germany, where several of his plays are in state theater repertory.[41][42]
Tannahill's first collection of plays,Age of Minority: Three Solo Plays, was published in 2013 and received Canada'sGovernor General's Award for English-language drama.[43] The collection features three plays for solo performers:Get Yourself Home Skyler James, the true story of a young female soldier who deserts the American military, thelive-streamed monologuerihannaboi95, about the fallout from a queer teenager's viral video, andPeter Fechter: 59 Minutes, which imagines the final hour in the life ofPeter Fechter, an adolescent from East Berlin shot while attempting to cross theBerlin Wall in 1962.
Tannahill's playLate Company, about two sets of parents seeking closure after a tragedy involving their sons, premiered in Toronto in 2014, and went on to receive multiple productions across Canada, and abroad.[44] In 2017, theFinborough Theatre production ofLate Company transferred to theTrafalgar Theatre on London'sWest End.[45][46][47] The play's Polish translation has been running in repertory atJuliusz Słowacki Theatre in Kraków since 2021.[48]
Concord Floral, a play written by Tannahill, and developed and directed by Erin Brubacher and Cara Spooner over a three-year process involving Toronto-area teenagers, is a reimagining ofGiovanni Boccaccio'sThe Decameron as a contemporary suburban ghost story. The play premiered in 2014 atThe Theatre Centre in Toronto, and has since been produced in translation around the world, at theatres including theVolkstheater, Vienna and theDeutsches Theater (Berlin).Concord Floral was a finalist for the 2016Governor General's Award for English-language drama, and won aDora Mavor Moore Award for 'Outstanding New Play'.
Tannahill premiered a double-bill of plays,Botticelli in the Fire & Sunday in Sodom in 2016 atCanadian Stage in Toronto. The first play,Botticelli in the Fire, is a queer reimagining of the events leading up to thebonfire of the vanities in 1497 Florence, while the second play,Sunday in Sodom, is a retelling of the destruction ofSodom and Gomorrah from the perspective ofLot's wife. The plays jointly won the 2018Governor General's Award for English-language drama.Botticelli in the Fire has had several subsequent productions, including at theWoolly Mammoth Theatre Company in Washington, DC and theHampstead Theatre in London.[49]
Tannahill's playDeclarations premiered in 2018 atCanadian Stage in Toronto, and was later presented at the 2021Festival TransAmériques in Montreal. The fragmentary and lyrical play, inspired by the terminal illness of the playwright's mother, was described byKaren Fricker ofThe Toronto Star as "a devastating but joyous statement about life and grief."[50] Critic José Teodoro wrote in theLiterary Review of Canada, "the wayDeclarations is structured, the musical feeling of it, the way elements accumulate and unify, then splinter off, plays as something closer to what is called 'systems music' as exemplified by modern composers such asSteve Reich."[51]
Is My Microphone On? features an ensemble of children and adolescents confronting the adult audience about their feelings of betrayal, grief, and, ultimately, forgiveness, in the face of impending climate collapse. Commissioned byDüsseldorfer Schauspielhaus andTheater der Welt, the play premiered at the 2022Theater der Welt, before productions in Canada, Germany, Sweden, and as part of the 2023National Theatre Connections festival in London.[52][53] The play was a finalist for the 2023Governor General's Award for English-language drama.
It was announced byPlaybill in 2024 that Tannahill's playPrince Faggot would have its world premiere Off-Broadway atPlaywrights Horizons, in a co-production withSoho Rep, in spring 2025.[54]
In 2024, Tannahill wrote a text for artist Miles Greenberg's nine hour durational performance, RESPAWN, at theArt Gallery of Ontario, which was both incorporated into the performance’s soundscape, and tattooed onto life-sized, sex doll sculptures bearing Greenberg’s likeness.[55]
Tannahill'svirtual reality performanceDraw Me Close, co-produced by London'sNational Theatre and theNational Film Board of Canada, premiered at the 2017Tribeca Film Festival, and in a longer iteration at theVenice Biennale's inauguralextended reality section, Venice Immersive.[56] The autobiographical piece, which featured a pioneering fusion of live performance,motion capture technology, virtual reality, and animation,[57] had runs at London'sYoung Vic Theatre in 2019, and Toronto'sSoulpepper Theatre in 2021.[58]
Tannahill's work in contemporary dance includes choreographing and performing withChristopher House inMarienbad for theToronto Dance Theatre in 2016; and writing the text forXenos in 2018, andOutwitting the Devil in 2019, two shows by choreographerAkram Khan, which have toured internationally to venues includingSadler's Wells Theatre,Festival d'Avignon, and theLincoln Center for the Performing Arts.Now (newspaper) listed bothMarienbad andXenos as Top 10 dance shows of the 2010s decade.[59]
Tannahill's production ofSheila Heti's playAll Our Happy Days Are Stupid, which he directed with frequent collaborator Erin Brubacher, premiered in 2014 atVideofag, more than a decade after Heti first began the script. Heti's struggle to write the play is one of the central plot-lines in her bestselling novelHow Should a Person Be?.[60] The production, which featured original songs byDan Bejar, was remounted atThe Kitchen in New York City in 2015.
On November 23, 2018, Tannahill, a resident ofBudapest at the time,[61] read the entirety ofJudith Butler'sGender Trouble over nine hours outside theHungarian Parliament Building in protest of Hungarian Prime MinisterViktor Orbán's decision to revoke accreditation and funding for gender studies programs in the country.[62][63]
On April 4, 2019, Tannahill and three collaborators staged a protest action during high tea atThe Dorchester Hotel.[64] The action was in response toBrunei's proposed introduction of laws that would make homosexual sex and adultery punishable by stoning to death.[65] TheDorchester Collection is a luxury hotel operator owned by theBrunei Investment Agency. Video documentation of the protest action, and Tannahill's forceful removal from the hotel, went viral soon after it was posted online.[66]
Tannahill married actorBrandon Flynn in October 2024.[67]
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