The Beautiful West and The Beloved of God
In the spring of 2008 Elena, who recently moved to Montreal with her seven year old daughter, Sharon, finds a job in a retail store on Sherbrooke Street. She meets Mahfouz working in his family's fast food outlet on The Main. Partially as an antidote to her chronic loneliness, partially influenced by Sharon's spontaneous affection for him, Elena commits to a deepening relationship. Together the three of them enjoy a wonderful spring. That summer, however, Mahfouz doesn't return from a visit to Cairo, and his father is picked up and held indefinitely for unknown charges on undisclosed evidence. Elena and Mahfouz, no longer in any contact with each other, must separately come to terms with their historical situation, and prepare for a future shaped by forces they struggle to understand.
Michael Springate is the author of the novel The Beautiful West & The Beloved of God (Guernica Editions, 2014), translated and published in French as L’engrenage des apparences (Les éditions Sémaphore 2017). His collection, Revolt/Compassion: Six Scripts for Contemporary Performance (Guernica Editions) was published in 2019 with a forward by Erin Hurley. He wrote the screenplay for Carolyn Combs’ debut feature, Acts of Imagination (2006), as well as for her most recent feature, Bella Ciao! (2018). Michael is a past Artistic Director of Playwrights Workshop Montreal, Prairie Theatre Exchange in Winnipeg, Factory Theatre in Toronto, and Dramaturg and Artistic Associate with Full Circle: First Nations Performance in Vancouver. He has taught acting, directing, and play development at both Simon Fraser and Concordia Universities, and was invited as Researcher/Lecturer to Gwangju National University in South Korea. He is a founding member of the Vancouver Latin American Cultural Centre, as well as of the film group Commercial Drive Productions, and is active in issues related to cooperative housing. He considers writing a life-long discipline rooted in independent research and reflection.
