Stage Door News
Stage Door News
Studio 180 Theatre, in association with Canadian Stage, presents the Canadian premiere of CLYBOURNE PARK by Bruce Norris. This savagely funny new comedy has won numerous prestigious awards, including London’s Olivier Best Play, the London Evening Standard Best Play and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama (2011). The Canadian premiere production is directed by Joel Greenberg and is performed April 2 to 28, 2012 at the Berkeley Street Theatre Downstairs. (Previews are April 2, 3 & 4; Media Night is Thursday, April 5 at 8 PM.)
Inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s groundbreaking 1959 Broadway hit A Raisin in the Sun (adapted into an equally successful 1961 film); CLYBOURNE PARK takes place in a suburban Chicago neighbourhood across two generations, as a battle rages over real estate. With a modern twist on race, class, property ownership and community, CLYBOURNE PARK offers a satirical look at demographics, history, home and heart.
CLYBOURNE PARK premiered in February 2010 Playwrights Horizons in New York. It had its UK premiere in January 2011 at the Royal Court Theatre in London, where it became a runaway hit and was transferred to the West End, eventually winning the London Evening Standard, Critics’ Circle, South Bank Sky Arts Theatre and Olivier awards for Best New Play. In October 2011 it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
The Pulitzer board described it as, “a powerful work whose memorable characters speak in witty and perceptive ways to America’s sometimes toxic struggle with race and class consciousness.”
Critical Praise
“A spiky and damningly insightful new comedy.” - NEW YORK TIMES
“Superb, elegantly written and hilarious.” - NEW YORKER
“A buzz-saw sharp new comedy of inadvertent bad manners.” - WASHINGTON POST
“Outrageously funny and provocative. A firecracker of a play.” – LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH
“Richly comic and unexpectedly moving… as unsettlingly immediate as it is exhilarating.” - SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
“With an irascible fearlessness, [Norris] flies in the face of political correctness.”- LOS ANGELES TIMES
“The funniest play of the year.” - LONDON EVENING STANDARD
The Cast & Creative Team
The Canadian premiere production features a cast of outstanding artists: Audrey Dwyer, Michael Healey, Sterling Jarvis, Jeff Lillico, Mark McGrinder, Kimwun Perehinec and Maria Ricossa.
Director Joel Greenberg leads a creative team that includes David Boechler (original set & costume design), Jung Hye Kim (completed set design), Michelle Bailey (costumes), Kimberly Purtell (lighting design), Lyon Smith (sound design), Mary Spyrakis & Vanessa Janiszewski (props). The stage manager is Robert Harding.
About the Playwright
Originally from Houston, Texas, Bruce Norris earned a degree in theatre from Chicago’s Northwestern University and went on to a career as an actor and playwright, basing himself in Chicago for 18 years. In 1997 he moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he currently resides. As an actor he has performed on stages across the United States and his major film appearances include A Civil Action, The Sixth Sense and All Good Things.
Bruce Norris’s other plays have received their world premieres at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre. These include: The Infidel (2000), Purple Heart (2002), We All Went Down to Amsterdam (2003, Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Work), The Pain and the Itch (2004, Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Work), The Unmentionables (2006) and A Parallelogram (2010).
Many of his plays have received subsequent productions across the world and Norris is the recipient of the 2009 Steinberg Playwright Award, the Whiting Foundation Prize for Drama and the Kesselring Prize, Honorable Mention.
Norris’s daring and irreverent plays have earned him the reputation of being a provocateur with a penchant for sparking arguments. Speaking to Nosheen Iqbal of The Guardian about Clybourne Park’s London premiere, he said, “There is a shocking degree of openness in [the 1950s] to make crass assertions about race. To say, ‘Oh, white people are this way but black people are that way.’ Today, we have this received etiquette when we’re speaking about race, but it is every bit as rigid and ordained as the old vocabulary – we just have a new set of words to talk about similar things.”
About Studio 180 Theatre
Inspired by the belief that people can engage more fully in the world through the experience of live performance, Studio 180 produces socially relevant theatre that provokes public discourse and promotes community engagement. By producing Canadian premieres, fostering new works by local playwrights and engaging in community-building and education initiatives, we create theatre that speaks to the world beyond the confines of the stage and moves directly into the world of action.
Studio 180’s inaugural production was the critically acclaimed The Laramie Project, which played to sold-out houses at Artword Theatre in 2003. Its success led to a 2004 remount at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, earning two Dora Award nominations and selling out public and student performances. More recently, in October 2009, we produced a one-night-only benefit performance of The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later, Tectonic Theater Project’s epilogue to the original play based on interviews conducted 10 years after the murder of Matthew Shepard.
In 2006, Studio 180 produced the Canadian premiere of British playwright Robin Soans’ The Arab-Israeli Cookbook at the Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs and in March 2008 staged Stuff Happens at the Berkeley Street Theatre Downstairs. As a result of Stuff Happens’ success with critics and audiences alike, Mirvish Productions programmed a remount in their subscription season and the production enjoyed a second run in fall 2009 at Toronto’s historic Royal Alexandra Theatre.
In October 2008, Offensive Shadows, by Toronto playwright Paul Dunn, ran at the Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, marking Studio 180’s first world premiere of a Canadian play. The National Post named Offensive Shadows one of the best new Canadian plays of the year, and shortly thereafter Studio 180 was named “Toronto’s Best Independent Theatre Company of 2008” by NOW Magazine.
Studio 180 has continued to produce a series of ambitious Canadian premieres, garnering more critical acclaim and box office success. Blackbird, The Overwhelming and Our Class (Dora nomination for Best Performance by an Ensemble and singled out as one of the best productions of 2011 by the Toronto Star and National Post) were all presented in partnership with Canadian Stage as part of the Berkeley Street Project.
Our co-production of Parade with Acting Up Stage Company received a Dora nomination for Best Production of a Musical.
Studio 180 is also dedicated to fostering Canadian voices by supporting local playwrights. Our current commissions include Conviction by Emil Sher (Hana’s Suitcase, Mourning Dove) and a play by award-winning playwright Hannah Moscovitch (East of Berlin, In This World, The Russian Play, Essay) inspired by the tragic murder of Mississauga teenager Aqsa Parvez.
Most recently, our October-November 2011 hit The Normal Heart topped critics’ year-end lists, inspiring the Toronto Star to call Studio 180, “one of the most interesting and challenging theatre companies in town.”
With our April 2012 Canadian premiere of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Clybourne Park, Studio 180 furthers our commitment to work that encourages dialogue and community engagement, bringing Toronto audiences a satire sure to provoke and entertain.
CLYBOURNE PARK
April 2 to 28, 2012
Berkeley Street Theatre Downstairs
26 Berkeley Street
, Toronto
Box Office 416-368-3110
Online Ticket Sales www.studio180theatre.com
Ticket Prices
Matinees
$43 • Wednesday, 1:30 PM
$45 • Saturday, 2 PM
Evenings
$43 • Previews: April 2, 3 & 4, 8 PM
$45 • Monday, 8 PM (limited PWYC tickets available)
$45 • Tuesday to Thursday, 8 PM
$49 • Friday & Saturday, 8 PM
$22–$27 front row tickets (all performances), subject to availability.
20% Student/Senior/Equity discount on regularly priced tickets, subject to availability.
Pay-What-You-Can (PWYC) tickets are available each Monday in person at the box office, beginning at 10 AM.
Talkbacks and pre-show chats
Studio 180 provides several opportunities to get an insider’s point of view on our work. Join our discussions about the issues explored in and the story behind CLYBOURNE PARK. To hear more about the play’s context, on Monday evenings and Wednesday afternoons meet Studio 180 Artistic Director Joel Greenberg, or another Studio 180 team member, one half hour before curtain for a chat. Or, to get a taste of cast members’ experiences working on the piece, stay after a Wednesday matinee or Thursday evening performance for a talkback.
•Pre-show chats – Monday evenings, April 9, 16 & 23 (7:30PM)
and Wednesday matinees, April 11, 18 & 25 (1PM)
•Post-show talkbacks – after Wednesday matinee and
Thursday evening performances, April 11, 12, 18, 19, 25 & 26
CLYBOURNE PARK is a Canadian Stage Berkeley Street Project initiative.
2012-03-12
Toronto: Studio 180 presents the Canadian premiere of “Clybourne Park” April 2-28