Playwright Oren Safdie may be on to something regarding hockey.

While Canadians may consider such players as Wayne Gretzky, Dave Keon, Bobby Orr, Phil Esposito or Yvon Cournoyer memorable, do any of these players have the title of a play named after them? Methinks not.

Oren Safdie's 'Beyond Ken Dryden' runs to June 1 at Toronto's Young Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto's Distillery District.

Safdie attended New York's Columbia University, where he was finishing his master's in architecture, when he took a playwrighting elective. Taking that elective changed his life:

"I won a schoolwide competition for one of my scenes, and seeing it up on stage in front of a live audience was something I never recovered from. After that, I started a small theatre company that was Columbia-funded, focused on developing young playwrights and actors at the school. This is where I "cut my teeth". Every three weeks, we presented six new one-acts, and I did everything from writing to setting the lights to choosing the material, to promoting the heck out of it."
 
After all this stuff emerging artists do to get their work seen, Oren connected with La MaMa Experimental Theatre in the East Village of New York—the birthplace of the off-off-Broadway movement—where the venerable artistic director, Ellen Stewart, gave him a home to develop his work.
 
It's also where he launched the first and only ever Canadian Theatre Festival in New York.
 
Today, Safdie teaches playwriting at high school and university. What does he say about the art of teaching: "That's been more of an education for me than anything I learned before." Another interesting fact about Safdie is that his stepfather is Roch Carrier, author of the famous Canadian story 'The Hockey Sweater.'
 
Safdie is more familiar with work produced in Montréal than in Toronto. One thing he has always found difficult in Canadian theatre is that so many of the plays are written and made with a grant in mind. People are writing what they will, ticking boxes, and getting their money to finance the show.
 
He argues that the most interesting plays are ones nobody in their right mind would want to fund because they would be controversial. He does not fit well into this model: "Most of my plays have been performed in the US, UK, and even Russia, where I have a play running over two years now. Canadian theatres often talk about attracting new audiences, but sometimes I feel they are not in touch with what that is."
 
Safdie reiterates how controversial social and political issues make for good theatre. Still, they only work when presented without the playwright's politics, allowing audiences to decide instead of being told what to think. That turns audience members off, even if they might stand and clap at the end. 
 
'Beyond Ken Dryden' is a solo show directed by Padraic Lillis and featuring actor Max Katz. The Young Centre website bills the play as: "a boy's idolization of his sport's hero, Ken Dryden, and the Montréal Canadiens, as his own family and the Province of Quebec are coming apart. This deeply personal story opens on the night the Canadiens play their last game at the Montréal Forum, and looks back to a time when Les Bleu, Blanc et Rouges were truly Les Habitants du Montréal."

In our email interview, Oren said he is not as huge a spectator sports fan as he was when he was a child. Playing sports has always been his tension release and a survival technique. He loves to spar and tends to be competitive when he plays. An example of this competition that best encapsulates this is a friendly weekly ball hockey club that he belonged to when he lived in Los Angeles, made up of ex-pat Canadians working in the film industry.  

What appeals to Oren the most about the era in 'Beyond Ken Dryden '?
 
The 1970s were an extraordinary yet tumultuous time to grow up in Montréal. The rise of Separatism and the coming to power of the Parti Québécois led to thousands of Montrealers migrating south on the 401 to Toronto; Jean Drapeau's Olympics in 1976 nearly bankrupted the city; and the era of disco, free-love, and counterculture revolutions challenged the traditional family like never before.
 
Safdie also tells me that one of the main ideas behind his play is to show how hockey in Canada and sports can be essential for bringing people and cities together. Society has so much divisiveness today, but that all melts away when rooting for the home team. It's healthy for community building.
 
For Oren, in the 70s, he saw his parents break up and reunite again a half-dozen times before parting ways for good. Through it all, Ken Dryden and the Montréal Canadiens remained steadfast in his life, lifting his – and the city's spirits - by winning six Stanley Cups in nine years. Dryden was Oren's hero when he was a child, when he needed him. He drew pictures of Dryden and put them up over his bed. Oren got his aunt, who worked in a hospital, to get him Dryden's autograph while taking his urine sample.  But the Ken Dryden Oren was corresponding with after his play opened, now felt more like a colleague he admired, but didn't hold the same lore he once had.
 
And that's a good thing for Safdie.
 
Who will tell Safdie's story here in Toronto?
 
Artist Max Katz.
 
Oren couldn't be more pleased.
 
Katz is an actor who understands Safdie's writing and can change his delivery of the material on a dime. There are moments in 'Dryden' that are deeply emotional, followed by comedy and reprieve. Although Katz hails originally from New York, he attended McGill University when he became a Habs fan, so Max knows intimately what the Canadiens mean to the city of Montréal.
 
Katz has also trained in physical theatre at the Boris Shchukin Institute in Moscow, which is crucial for the solo role. 'Beyond Ken Dryden' is not a play where a person stands before the audience and tells a story – it's an hour and twenty-minute workout that can be as physical as the game of hockey itself.
 
Oren also adds:
 
"I've never worked with an actor [like Max] with so much confidence and the ability to turn it on at will. I remember being worried when I heard before opening night in Montréal that Max had played a music gig the night before and was also busy all day doing other unrelated things leading up to the performance. But he did the show without missing a beat."
 
Safdie also has praise for director Padraic Lillis:
 
"He has been an unspoken hero in this production of 'Dryden.'  As someone generally skeptical about one-person shows, Padraic has created something visually engaging and full of surprises."
 
What's next for Oren Safdie once 'Beyond Ken Dryden' concludes its run across the country?
 
Film is becoming a bigger part of his curriculum vitae. His latest script, Lunch Hour, with Thomas Middleditch (Silicon Valley), Alan Cumming, Krysta Rodriguez, Jamie Kennedy, and MJ Kang, wrapped filming last fall with Toronto director Larry Gutterman (Antz, Cats & Dogs, Mask 2) and is in the final stages of editing. The best way to describe it is an unromantic comedy about a married man who meets a married woman during their lunch hour.
 
Another of Oren's plays, 'Color Blind', will run this summer 2025 in Los Angeles as part of The Road House Theatre SPF Festival.
 
He's also finishing up a new play called The Semi-Anti-Semite, which deals with some of the issues he's encountered since October 7.
 
To purchase tickets for 'Beyond Ken Dryden' at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, call the Box Office at (416) 866-8666 or email boxoffice@youngcentre.ca.