Creeps (play)

Did You Know?

• The play is set in a bathroom where the men barricade themselves in protest.
• Freeman wrote the script on a typewriter using a stick held between his teeth.
• A telethon and circus performance from the Shriners occasionally interrupts the men.

Productions

Creeps first hit the stage in February 1971 at Toronto’s Factory Theatre Lab. It later appeared in Tarragon Theatre’s inaugural season that same year, with John Candy in the cast. The play took home the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award in 1973. Its American debut came in 1973 at Washington’s Folger Theater, followed by a run at Playhouse 2 in New York City, with Louis W. Scheeder directing. In 1979, the University of Saskatchewan Drama Department mounted a production directed by Tom Kerr. That version traveled to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where it marked the play’s British premiere and earned a Fringe First award. Vancouver’s Realwheels Theatre produced the play in 2016, directed by Brian Cochrane, making history as the first staging to cast disabled actors in disabled roles. This production won three 2017 Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards in the small theatre category: Outstanding Direction, Significant Artistic Achievement for the ensemble, and Outstanding Set Design for Lauchlin Johnston. Christopher David Gauthier received a nomination for Outstanding Costume Design, and Cochrane was also nominated for Outstanding Direction.