Trout Stanley

Trout: Lookin’ for somethin’ I lost.
Sugar: What – your sock, your pen, your homework assignment (laughing)? Are you cryin’.
Trout: Yeah. I’m fuckin’ cryin’.
Sugar: Watch your froggin’ language, this is a Holy zone.
Trout: Sorry.
Sugar: Don’t apologize. Sorry is an invitation. Sorry is a weakness. Sorry is a disease.

Described by Variety as ‘Yukon Gothic,’ Claudia Dey’s acclaimed Trout Stanley is set in northern British Columbia, on the outskirts of a mining town between Misery Junction and Grizzly Alley. In this inhospitable setting live a pair of sisters, twins who are not identical in any way: Sugar, a complicated, insecure waif who still wears the tracksuit her mother died in ten years prior, and Grace, a rough-and-tumble hellcat who owns the local dump. At the play’s opening, it is their thirtieth birthday, and the tv news has announced the disappearance of a local Scrabble-champ stripper. While Grace is at the dump, housebound Sugar is surprised by a mysterious drifter, one Trout Stanley, foot fetishist and fake cop, who is searching for the lake where his parents drowned – a fishy story if there ever was one. He quickly becomes mired in a surreal love triangle with the two sisters.

Trout Stanley is about three people who confuse codependence for co-operation and afliction for affection. An eccentric, captivating story in which the biggest catch of all is love.

Lavishly illustrated by Jason Logan.

‘Trout Stanley stands out from the crowd … Dey, whose language has always been striking and whose dramaturgy has sharpened with every play she’s written, here delivers a masterwork.’ – The National Post