Janet Munsil is a playwright and producer who has been working in Canadian theatre for decades. Born in Seattle, raised in British Columbia, Janet is a graduate of the University of Victoria’s Theatre Program. She is an internationally produced playwright, the producer of over 50 arts festivals, the longest-serving Canadian Fringe Producer, and was the Artistic Director of Intrepid Theatre Victoria for 25 years. She is the 2016 Artist in Residence at U of Vic’s Centre for Studies in Religion and Society.

That Elusive Spark Synopsis 

Helen Harlow is an expert at understanding the human brain, and yet her own remains a mystery. On the run from her own once-brilliant future as a neuro-psychologist, Helen takes a room in a frat-house basement and an unsuitable job at a small college teaching Psych 101 to clueless freshmen. Meanwhile in 1848, railway construction worker Phineas Gage survives the passage of an iron rod through through his head, and a dramatic change in personality. Attended to and observed by the young doctor, James Harlow, Helen’s ancestor, the legacy of Phineas’s dramatic story shows both how much we have learned about the brain, and how little we comprehend of our own hearts and minds.

We are honoured to have Janet present a staged reading of her award-winning play That Elusive Spark on the Prismatic stage.