Review: Summer Folk

(photo credit: Joseph Hammond)

The art of life and hatred
by Jasmine Chen
@CHENPINGTING

Summerfolk by Maxim Gorky, featuring the graduating class of the Ryerson Theatre School, opened this Friday at Ryerson's Mainstage Theatre. Grad shows tend to be massive productions; plays with enough roles for everyone in the class and the opportunity for production students to work on a large scale show, showcasing four years of training in action. Written in 1904, Summerfolk is about a madcap collection of Russian middle class men and women who spend the summer together at a summer home  where they bicker, fall in love, out of love, have affairs, philosophize, get drunk and grow to hate each other. 

News: fu-Gen Season Launch

David Yee

Ten and Beyond

fu-GEN launches while harking to the past

by Jasmine Chen

(photos by Karl Ang)

“Welcome.

The theme for our 10th Anniversary Season is “home”. It’s an appropriate theme, because that’s why we started this little company 10 years ago; not around a single production or the work of a lone artist, but to create a HOME for the Asian Canadian theatre artist. Because we didn’t have one. What we DID have was a brilliant community of independent artists who were creating brave, exciting, risky work… who were challenging the stereotypes that they faced in audition rooms, stages and film sets all across the country… but who were, all the same, without a supportive infrastructure. 

Tonight we’re celebrating our 10th anniversary and also the 30th anniversary of the play “Yellow Fever” by Rick Shiomi, the first ever Asian Canadian play. Later on in our season, we’ll do more readings of Yellow Fever, in the 905 North communities of Markham and Richmond Hill… because apparently people live up there.” - David Yee, Artistic Director of fu-GEN Theatre Company. 

It was raining when I arrived at the Regent Park Arts and Cultural Centre in the late afternoon. I was there early to volunteer and help set up the bar that would later serve the many guests celebrating fu-GEN Asian-Canadian Theatre Company's 1oth Anniversary Season Launch. As I walked through the main doors there were men installing a wall, others hanging paintings in the lobby, and a gentleman tuning a piano. Tonight would be the first event to break in the new space! That space being the lobby of Regent Park Arts and Cultural Centre (RPACC)and the Aki Studio, run by Native Earth Performing Arts. The actors were already waiting in the lobby, chatting before heading into rehearsal with playwright and director Rick Shiomi, whose play Yellow Fever would be performed later that night. I hadn't known this before, but Yellow Fever was celebrating its 30th Anniversary as the first Asian Canadian play EVER produced in Canada. How appropriate, am I right?! 

In a Word..Kelly Thornton, Artistic Director at Nightwood Theatre

[ED: Today we're  inaugurating a new weekly feature at The Charlebois Post - Toronto: In a Word... Each week, on Wednesday, you'll be treated to a short-form interview with someone in the Toronto theatre. Some will be talking about their upcoming productions, some about their lives, some just addressing questions about their work or the world around them. Enjoy!]


I'd love audiences to be astonished by the power of women's voice in theatre.
Kelly Thornton faces a new season and looks again at Penelopiad
by Jasmine Chen

CHARPO: As Nightwood enters its 33rd season, what challenges did you face when planning the programming? Did you have themes you knew you wanted to explore, or were you surprised with the season you eventually arrived at?

KELLY: Well, it's very interesting, having launched the New Groundswell Festival last year, the mandate of this festival is to fortify new work before it hits the Mainstage,  before it's open to critics and audiences at large. The idea of the workshop production is to lay seed for a Mainstage production. So, certainly Between the Sheets revealed so much in the Groundswell Festival. It was very appealing to audiences, and we knew right after the festival that we would go forward with it. 

And then The Penelopiad was such a raging hit! I mean people were so passionate, sometimes angry about not getting a ticket that we knew we had to bring it back. The Penelopiad is one of those plays that just doesn't happen every day. For us as a company it was such a huge ambitious show, we were mavericks to take it on, I think. With the alchemy of the Company, the characters, the cast and the whole design and production team, we really had a gift of a show on our hands. That was an obvious choice to bring back. So in terms of themes, I think the Fates really brought those two pieces of the puzzle together. 

The New Groundswell Festival is premiering a work by Judith Thompson [Who Killed Snow White?], which was also just coming up the pipes. Judith was playwright-in-residence last year with OAC, and she came to us with a monologue in Femcab about the disconnect between young women and feminism. It's a subject matter that has been very personal to her, so she really wanted to take it on. She came to us with this super provocative anti-feminist teenager, a first year University student taking an elective in Women's Studies and really having a clash with her teacher. It's comic but then goes very dark, in the way that Thompson does. 

Odelah Creations with La Memoire Du Corps|Body Memory is a Company that I have been watching. Their explorations come from a very Québecois - very physical perspective. They research into personal stories from women and body memory. I want to continue to stretch the boundaries of what theatre can be and I'm interested in the Quebec voice. And then The Oracle at Gros Morne is a totally different kettle of fish coming out of Newfoundland! The New Groundswell festival with its touring productions, is trying to reveal to the Toronto audience what's happening in other regions of the country.

There's no real theme that I hung the season on. My desire as the Artistic Director of Nightwood, is to interpret 'What's my job as the AD of a feminist theatre company in the 21st century'? For me, it's to look at women in all directions, to look deeply and excavate the women's experience, in the most flawed of women to the most heroic of women. I'm not necessarily just looking at women's success, but also the struggle that they have.

First-Person: Melissa-Jane Shaw on Stockholm

Melissa-Jane Shaw, Jonathon Young (Photo credit: Karim Romero)

Double-Duty

The weight of two roles in presenting Stockholm

by Melissa-Jane Shaw (notes compiled by Jasmine Chen)

Seventh Stage Productions, which is now heading into  its 7th year is dedicated to telling stories by women, about women and for everyone; as well as generating opportunities for emerging and established female artists both on and off stage. Stockholm by Bryony Lavery is about to have its North American Premiere at the Tarragon Extra Space. As Artistic Producer of Seventh Stage Productions and the actor playing Kali, I invite you to see this startling piece of theatre that we have all worked so hard on. 

Stockholm has a cast of two, which is myself and the wonderful Jonathon Young. People often ask me how I manage to perform in the show while acting as producer at the same time. Our company is very small so the roles are essentially defined by Kelly and I, based on our strengths. Initially most of the business side of the company fell on my shoulders, which I found got to be too much. This past year, we sat down and figured out what we could divide. It has been easier this season for me with the division of duties; I don't think I could have done this show without Kelly's help. 

Interview: Actor Brendan McMurtry-Howlett on Sia

(photo credit: Sandra Lefrancois)

The Theatre Politic

A committed actor talks about those dangerous times of "I can do anything"

by Jasmine Chen

This week I sat down with Brendan McMurtry-Howlett who plays Nicholas Summers in SIA, to talk about his experience rehearsing and performing this intensely demanding play, now playing at the Factory Studio Theatre until April 15.

CHARPO: SIA is an extremely politically charged piece; as someone who is quite political himself, how do you relate to your character? 

BRENDAN: It feels close to home in a lot of ways, and in a lot of ways pretty different. He is a young guy, younger than me; he's rough around the edges which is something I could relate to when I was 19-21, that feeling of “I can do anything”. It is that age where you learn all that you are capable of, and very shortly after you learn all that you are not capable of. That's very much where Nick is. I come from a background of social justice. I can relate to a lot of that social consciousness that is looking outwards towards global impact. This play presents us with an interesting dilemma, how do you engage that desire to make the world a better place? Which is what I think led Nick to volunteer in the Liberian refugee camp, in the first place; which is a noble thing to do, but how do you go about that? That becomes the major question. 

I think a lot of the things he says in the play are valid, some of which get him into more trouble. I don't think it is what he's saying, I think it's how he's saying it. It can be that ignorance or naiveté about the difference of the realities of living in North America vs living in a Liberian refugee camp that leads to serious breakdowns in communication. Personally, I think that is at the core of Nick and Abraham's relationship in the play. Most of the problems spark from both of them not understanding where the other person comes from, not having any context beyond the stereotypes of what it is like to be a white person or a black person living in Africa. I don't think Nick's crime was going there wanting to help. It is so complicated, because here in North America I know tons of people who have gone to volunteer in Africa.

Review: Sia

Brendan McMurtry-Howlett and Thomas Olajide (photo credit: Sandra Lefrancois)

Searing Sia

Cahoots at Factory serves up pain and compassion

by Jasmine Chen

Last night’s opening of SIA at The Factory Theatre could not have fallen on a more appropriate day. On World Theatre Day, when we were asking ourselves, what is the purpose of theatre?, SIA answered. Matthew Mackenzie’s new play does what great theatre is supposed to do, challenge our perceptions, provoke thought, and be a mirror to society, reflecting what can sometimes be hard truths to swallow. SIA is grueling, painful, unforgiving at times, but in the end full of compassion. 

Review: free as injuns

James Cade (photo credit: Juan Camlio Palacio)

Passion

free as injuns engages the senses

by Jessica Yen

Inspired by O’Neill’s classic American play Desire Under the Elms, free as injuns is a saga centered around the Cabot family, three sons born from different mothers, a heavy handed widower father, and his new (significantly younger) wife. Even Cabot is the youngest son who is guided by his dead mother’s voice (played by Yvette Nolan in voiceover). He is driven by his need to reclaim the farm which he believes is his birthright. Enter Be Cabot, Ephraim’s young half-native wife who immediately finds herself irresistibly drawn to Even. They find love in each other and more importantly the shared desire to take back the land. Be becomes pregnant with Even’s child, deceiving Ephraim into believing that it is his. Everyone but the oblivious Ephraim is forced to live under the lie which eventually undoes Even and his relationship with Be.