Clem Martini

Clem Martini is a celebrated playwright, novelist, and screenwriter, with more than 30 plays and 13 books of fiction and nonfiction to his credit. His text on playwriting, The Blunt Playwright, is employed by colleges and universities across the country. His books include Upside Down: A Family’s Journey Through Mental Illness, the W.O. Mitchell Prize-winning Bitter Medicine: A Graphic Memoir of Mental Illness, and The Unravelling, the 2018 Alberta Trade Non-Fiction Book of the Year. A passionate advocate on behalf of issues associated with suicide, mental-illness-related-stigma, and family caregiving, Martini was a member of the Canadian Mental Health Commission and has been an invited speaker at a number of conferences, symposia, and health related gatherings. He is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada, a recipient of the ATB Financial Healing through the Arts Award, and a Professor of Drama in the School of Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Calgary.

FESTIVAL BOOK

Cantata (Rumours of My Crazy, Useless Life) & The Extinction Therapist

Clem Martini’s award-winning play, Cantata (Rumours of My Crazy, Useless Life), provides a window into the experience of people going through the hidden, high-stakes struggles of elder care and mental illness. In Cantata, Martin Bussinger discovers his elderly mother’s health and mental acuity is deteriorating, facing him with emotional and medical problems that feel almost unsolvable. He realizes that negotiating the delicate network of caregiving, strung together with the further challenge of supporting a brother living with a mental illness, places him in a situation that is simultaneously heartrending and darkly comic. Cantata was named Most Outstanding New Play in the Calgary Theatre Critics’ Awards.

In The Extinction Therapist, Dr. Marshall’s therapeutic practice offers group support to those threatened with extinction. A libidinous woolly mammoth, a testy short-eared shrew, the uncompromising smallpox virus, an insecure tyrannosaurus rex, and the hapless Minister for the Environment convene to receive therapy, in an attempt to come to terms with the complicated, volatile feelings associated with their precarious life-and-death circumstances. Then things get complicated.

GET THE BOOK

Owl’s Nest Books | Calgary Public Library

BE CURIOUSER

• Clem Martini turns award-winning book about caregiving for his brother into a play. –The Calgary Herald
• Review: Cantata & The Extinction Therapist. –Alberta Views
• T-Rex and friends to star in Extinction Therapist –The Hamilton Spectator