The Listeners: Jordan Tannahill

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I think the idea of this person reminded me a little bit of Julianne Moore in Todd Haynes's Safe, who has this inexplicable illness or ailment which burdens her incredibly, but who, despite the good intentions of her family, is not believed. The conspiracy is what's being done to us....It's only a theory until there's evidence, and the evidence is all around us....p234 On November 23, 2018, Tannahill read the entirety of Judith Butler's Gender Trouble over nine hours outside the Hungarian Parliament Building in protest of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's decision to revoke accreditation and funding for gender studies programs in the country. [40] [41] Playwright April De Angelis joins Tom to talk about her new musical Gin Craze! Described as 'a booze soaked love ballad from the women of Gin Lane.' Jordan Tannahill’s Theatre of the Unimpressed is essential reading for anybody interested in contemporary theatre". The Globe and Mail, June 12, 2015.

Tests rule out anything “medical” so friends and her family begin to question her mental health, making Claire feel frustrated and alone. Finally, one of her students, Kyle, shares with her that he can hear it too. Tannahill is a playwright, filmmaker, author and theatre director. He has twice won the Governor General's Literary Award for drama: in 2014 for Age of Minority and in 2018 for Botticelli in the Fire & Sunday in Sodom. He is also the author of the novel Liminal. The fact that we do have a society in which roughly one half of the population seem to be living in one reality and the other half population seems to be living in another totally alternative reality, I think that seems to be one of the great problems of our current political moment. So how do we create a bridge of logic and empathy between that chasm, where we're not just on one side of that and Claire is on the other? When sleepless nights turn into manic days, The Hum puts Claire on the edge of a breakdown that culminates in an incident at work. Paul’s support has its limits. He and their mouthy teenage daughter Ashley are losing patience with the woman they love. On April 4, 2019, Tannahill and three collaborators staged a protest action during high tea at The Dorchester Hotel. [42] The action was in response to Brunei's proposed introduction of laws that make homosexual sex and adultery punishable by stoning to death. [43] The Dorchester Collection is a luxury hotel operator owned by the Brunei Investment Agency. Video documentation of the protest action, and Tannahill's forceful removal from the hotel, went viral soon after it was posted online. [44] Bibliography [ edit ] Fiction [ edit ]There has always been the trend of unlikeable characters in the books I enjoy and this one is no different. I was sympathetic for our main character Claire but she makes several bad decisions along the way that, morally, are hard to root for. There are plenty of side characters who aren't completely detestable but I can't say I liked them either.⁠ He received Canada's Governor General's Award for English-language drama in 2014 for Age of Minority: Three Solo Plays, [18] in 2018 for his plays Botticelli in the Fire & Sunday in Sodom, [19] and was a finalist for the award in 2016 for his play Concord Floral, and in 2023 for Is My Microphone On?. He has been nominated for five Dora Mavor Moore Awards for Toronto theatre, winning in 2013 for his live-streamed monologue rihannaboi95, and in 2015 for Concord Floral.

I studied Paul's face, wondering if this was all a set-up for one of his laboured jokes. He then told me that ever since his father died in the fall, he had found himself thinking about faith. And I began thinking very much of this idea of the hysterical subject, this very gendered figure throughout history. A woman's symptoms and ailments have often been disregarded and dismissed as psychosomatic or hysterical or what have you. I began thinking very much of this idea of the hysterical subject, this very gendered figure throughout history. - Jordan Tannahill The Listeners is on the shortlist for the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize. The winner will be announced on Nov. 8, 2021. One of the book’s most striking but bewildering motifs is the coyotes that dart in and out of the narrative. The most poignant chapter involves a coyote walking through a park in the wake of a tragic event. Are they reminders of the feral nature that lurks in all of us?While Claire’s voice is strong, the personalities of the Hummers – the support group she joins – are even stronger. The Listeners might have benefited from a fleshing-out of the group’s tensions and strange connections. What if readers had met some of the former students of the group’s leader, Howard, to get a frame of reference for the allegations against him? What is behind his wife Jo’s cool and calm exterior? The desperate relationships between these disparate people made the scenes with the Hummers eerie and wonderfully distressing. It is impossible not to make the connection between her beliefs and others. What is The Hum compared to Him; God, of any stripe or color or flavor? Claire is validated when Kyle, one of her students, says he’s also been hearing The Hum. They strike up a friendship to investigate the sound, but the connotations surrounding their relationship prove damaging when exposed. A sharp, tense, and extremely readable novel. It leaves one feeling a little unsteady, a little unclean…” The Listeners is at once a revery for the sublime, for the innocuous tapestry of sounds that make up the rhythms of our lives — and the pollution of sounds that can tear and devour. It is at once 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. Tannahill writes as both poet and playwright, millennial and philosopher, as one who trains his reader to attune to the frequency of 'the Hum' to experience a rich hinterland beyond our embodied senses, beyond our perceptions of grace or faith. I leave listening, even to the silences, which are always screaming, and posit myself in my cochlea, forever now a conch, flaring and reeling, primordially.”

I mean, to me, there's something kind of queer about that, I suppose. This libidinal, anarchic energy that the hum begins to represent in Claire's life and the lives of these people who hear it. And by inviting it into her life, it disrupts and rearranges everything. It's definitely an impulse I can relate to. The Listeners is one of those rare novels that entered my soul, rearranged my brain cells and then my world view. Tannahill writes with the heat and wisdom of a God.” Tannahill has been described as "the enfant terrible of Canadian Theatre" by Libération, "the hottest name in Canadian theatre" by The Montreal Gazette, and "widely celebrated as one of Canada's most accomplished young playwrights, filmmakers and all-round multidisciplinary artists" by The Toronto Star. In 2019, CBC Arts named Tannahill as one of sixty-nine LGBTQ Canadians, living or deceased, who has shaped the country's history. As It Happens 6:31 Toronto playwright Jordan Tannahill wins GG English Drama prize Featured VideoComing of Age. Toronto playwright Jordan Tannahill wins this year's Governor General's award for English drama for his three play collection, "Age of Minority," which tells the stories of three young outcasts struggling to deal with their sexuality.Having the reader be able to sympathize or empathize with Claire's situation sounds like a challenge. Why do you think that was important to do? Throughout, Claire herself and a few other characters are reading Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain, a purposeful clue to this being a book about a clash of ideas, and also raising questions of how life is experienced via the body and mind (spirit, I think, is the term that Mann uses). Concepts of mystery and wonder are raised but evade any kind of definition or explanation - isn't that their defining essence?

Despite being an undeniable character study at heart, The Listeners excels as a social commentary on the power of beliefs to unite and divide people.

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The Listeners explores the seduction of the wild and unknowable, the human search for the transcendent, the rise of conspiracy culture in the West, and the desire for community and connection in our increasingly polarised times. This phenomenon of the hum was something that had been widely reported for several decades, at least since the early 1970s. And it was something that there was a lot of lingering mystery about, which intrigued me. The natural explanations for what this could be were sublime and interesting.