Poet, composer, singer, and playwright, Michel Garneau derives his originality from two features rarely found among the contemporary avant-garde: his thoroughly affirmative outlook on life and the highly poetic quality of his drama. Conventional in theme, his plays are experimental in language, structure, and technique. He has developed a personal stage idiom based on the spoken word and using all the freedom of the nouvelle écriture; his dramatic structures, like those of Michel Tremblay, are free-flowing, based on the principles of musical composition; and his style ranges from oneiric realism to the grotesque. Several of his works are "poèmes à jouer," poems for the stage, rather than plays in the usual sense of the word.

Michel Garneau, son of Antonio Garneau, a judge, and Germaine d'Amour Garneau, was born in Montreal. After schooling at several Jesuit institutions (collèges Jean-de-Brébeuf, Sainte-Marie, and...