Tamara premiered at Strachan House in Trinity-Bellwoods Park,
Toronto, Ontario, on May 8, 1981, and was published as a book the same year. Exploring the rise of
Fascism in 1920s Italy, the play was one of the first non-linear, immersive theatre experiences. The audience followed different characters through an Italian villa, with several scenes playing simultaneously. Several real people are fictionalized in the work, including Polish artist
Tamara de Lempicka; Italian war hero, journalist, and poet General
Gabriele D'Annunzio; and Aélis Mazoyer, the mistress and housekeeper of D'Annunzio.
The New York Times called it "a shot of adrenaline for sedentary theatergoers" and praised its "thunderstruck" dialogue. Director
Steven Spielberg, speaking at the
Directors Guild of America, raised the play as a memorable influence on his own storytelling. After its Toronto production, directed by
Richard Rose, won Krizanc two
Dora Mavor Moore Awards in 1982, the play toured the
United States,
Portugal,
Poland,
Argentina, and
Mexico.
Moses Znaimer produced the Hollywood production, which ran for nine years, from 1984 to 1994. Tamara was one of the first theatre productions with multi-story lines happening simultaneously where the audience's participation was key to the experience itself. As such, it was the forerunner of later immersive experiences, such as those created by the British theatre company
Punchdrunk and New York's Then She Fell. The concepts it explored became the inspiration for the academic journal
Tamara: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science, which later became
Tamara: Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry, which focuses on plurivocal and postmodern interpretations of several academic disciplines, including critical management studies, postmodern organization theory, and social systems theory. Krizanc's plays are marked by his explorations not only with structure and space but also with the role of the artist. For his play
Prague, Krizanc won the 1985
Chalmers Award and the 1987
Governor General's Award. Set in 1983, the play focuses on a theatre company about to mount a "dangerous" work. Inspired by the one-act plays of
Václav Havel, it deals with the challenges of creating art in a
communist country and the role of the artist within a system of
censorship. In 1990, Krizanc won the Chalmers Award for his play
The Half of It, which tells the story of idealistic thirty-something Jill Ashe and the intersection of
capitalism and
environmentalism through the travails of one family. His friendship with Canadian writer
Paul Quarrington became the subject of the play
Dying Is Easy. In 1993, Krizanc began writing for the screen and television. His many writing credits include the movie
Men with Brooms, the telefilms
H2O,
The Trojan Horse and
The Summit, as well as writing for the television series ''
Da Vinci's Inquest, Due South, ZOS: Zone of Separation, Rookie Blue, Saving Hope, Caught and Departure''. Often, he has collaborated with actor and director
Paul Gross. ==Bibliography==