Outside in the Laneway Under the Stars Act I & II
John Arthur Sweet
Chapbook
50 Copies
ISBN 978-1-990474-17-0
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John Arthur Sweet was born and grew up in Belleville, Ontario, Canada. At age 20, he moved to Toronto, where he worked during the day and studied acting in the evenings and on weekends. When he was 24, he moved to the UK, and lived in London until age 32. There, he gained his training in the craft of copy editing, which he continues to this day, and his love of theatre.
Returning to Toronto, he worked as a freelance editor and (when he could) as an actor. He did his first one-man show in 1998, and he eventually discovered that the self-authored monologue is his “bliss.” Following his bliss (to echo Joseph Campbell’s phrase), he has performed his monologues at Fringe festivals across Canada, as well as abroad, in Ireland, England, and the Czech Republic.
He moved to Montréal in 2008. He likes the instability here, linguistic and social, the feeling that nothing is finished but something human is being constructed, the eternal orange cones, the ambient marginality, the queerness. It feels like home.
A pivotal experience was attending the Spoken Word program at the Banff Centre in 2013. (Thank you, program director Tanya Evanson.) This opened up a whole new way of writing and performing—shorter pieces, storytelling, poetry, at spoken word events and literary soirées and such.
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outside, in the laneway, under the stars is John’s fifth full-length monologue. All five have been performed at the Prague Fringe, which feels like his theatrical home (thank you, Carole Wears and Steve Gove).
John’s website is www.johnarthursweet.online.
You can also reach him at: hard.times@videotron.ca
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