Michel Tremblay

"The greatest playwright Scotland never had." - Mark Fisher, The Guardian



Michel Tremblay is considered the most important playwright in Quebec theatre history. His ground-breaking work for theatre presents Montreal's working class speaking the city's vernacular French. Tremblay's plays and novels create a family saga where many characters appear in more than one work.

Bill Findlay, a Scot, and Martin Bowman, a Montrealer of Scottish descent, translated eight Tremblay plays into Scots. The energy, versatility, and range of the Scots language capture the essence of Tremblay's drama. These critically acclaimed translations, produced professionally in Scotland from 1989 to 2003, constitute an important body of work in modern Scottish theatre.

Three of this volume's translations premiered in Edinburgh: The House among the Stars and Solemn Mass for a Full Moon in Summer at the Traverse and If Only... at the Royal Lyceum. Albertine, in Five Times premiered at Glasgow's Tron, touring to eight Scottish cities. In them, Tremblay - without diminishing the intensity of his dissection of family life - considers possible acceptance and reconciliation in the face of the difficulties and challenges confronting his characters.

Besides playtexts, both volumes of Michel Tremblay: Plays in Scots contain a foreword and introductions to each volume as well as to each play, including historical background material.