A heartbreaking event explored via theatre comes to Buddies in Bad Times
After The Show
by Donald Rees
I’ve written about why Brave New Productions set out to tackle the Montreal premiere of “The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later”. I detailed our process and explained how ambitious the project was for our production company in previous articles. With a large cast and very serious subject matter, expectations (and my blood pressure) were at an all-time high when opening night finally came around.
So how did it go?
Unbelievably well. Actually, despite the ambitious nature of the project and high expectations generated from the generous amount of attention by local media (including The Charlebois Post), Laramie exceeded our expectations in every way possible. Not only did we have a fantastic turn-out for all of our shows, feedback was beyond positive with notable members of the LGBT and Theatre community reaching out to us afterwords to offer up compliments and encouragement. It warmed our hearts. Emma McQueen (Artistic Director) and I sat down halfway through the run to talk about how inspired we felt by our audience's reactions and we had an in-depth conversation about how we felt a new path had been illuminated for our company. Activist theatre? No. A permanent switch to drama over comedy? Not at all. Our new-found inspiration is hard to articulate but will hopefully make itself apparent in the coming year.
