Brad Fraser - Career

Career

Fraser first came to his prominence as a playwright with Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love, an episodically structured play about a group of thirtysomethings trying to find their way through life in Edmonton, Alberta, while the city is haunted by a serial killer. It was a hit at the Alberta Theatre Projects' playRites '89, and numerous highly acclaimed productions followed, including tremendously popular productions in Toronto and Chicago. The play was named one of the 10 Best Plays of 1992 by TIME.

While the New York production of Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love attracted significant attention, Fraser has not directed his career toward New York. Indeed, his next script, Poor Super Man, had its premiere in Cincinnati, Ohio. Coming three years after the 1991 Robert Mapplethorpe controversy in Cincinnati, Poor Super Man inspired international headlines when the board of directors of Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati temporarily canceled the production because of its anticipated obscenity. After a public outcry, the production was reinstated. Poor Super Man opened without incident and played to considerable acclaim. The play employed the innovative device of projecting captions onto the proscenium, commenting on the action and expressing the private thoughts of the characters. It was named one of the 10 Best Plays of 1994 by TIME.

Fraser's plays frequently refer to earlier works, as characters and incidents from one play will make an appearance or receive mention in a subsequent work. The David character of Unidentified Human Remains, for example, reappears in Poor Super Man, and Matt, the central character of Poor Super Man, reappears in Martin Yesterday, and so forth.

Fraser has been especially successful in the U.K., where his work has enjoyed both critical and popular success, beginning with London's Evening Standard Award for Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love in 1993. Fraser's work references heavily typical popular culture, especially comic books, horror films and primetime television, and is often more highly valued in retrospect than when it first opens. Typical of this would be a reappraisal by Porter Anderson, theater columnist for New York's Village Voice, who conceded that Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love was "under-rated during its 1991 run at the Orpheum", and that the play "had a grunge sensuality that could seduce a young audience to live theatre" and a "slasher plot ripped away at the exhausted cynicism of alienated Canadian youths."

In addition to his theatre work, Fraser has written two films, Love and Human Remains based on his play "Unidentified Human Remains..." and Leaving Metropolis, both adaptations of his plays. He has also written for the television series Queer as Folk, was host of his own Toronto-based television talk show, Jawbreaker, and for a period of time wrote a biweekly column for the Canadian gay magazine fab.

Keanu Reeves had his first acting role in the Toronto production of Fraser's play Wolfboy in the year 1985 at Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto, Ontario Canada.

A musical production of "Wolfboy" came later.