Stage Door News
Stage Door News
WORKhouse Theatre, a TAPA member, is thrilled to announce the world premier of
Gwen Powers by Toronto actor and playwright Michael Goldlist.
Summary of Gwen Powers
Gwen Powers is a powerful and provocative new play, telling the story of an unlikely friendship between a ferociously smart and alluring high school student and her teacher, a young man struggling with the perceived realities of becoming an adult.
Gwen is the student; ferociously smart and uncompromisingly sexy. She has relentless energy, she never shuts up, and she won’t get out of your apartment. She is charming and precocious, an old soul beyond her 17 years of age, and now she is hell‐bent on testing the limits of her new found powers of persuasion. Jeff is the teacher; a washed up rocker, wildly popular among the students for his subtle charisma and authenticity. He is affable, benign, and somewhat in control of himself. Set against a modern Toronto backdrop, a city bursting with opportunities and crushing defeats, these two individuals are trapped between adolescence and adulthood, desperately trying to navigate the alleyways of lust, loneliness and the stark chasm between the private and public self.
Starring Sofia Banzhaf as Gwen, Jonah Hundert as Jeff, and Jan‐Michael Weir as Tom, this painfully honest and darkly comedic play questions the boundaries we create within relationships and reconstructs the notion of conventional power dynamics. This play will leave the audience wondering: Who is the authority and who is being controlled?
Since its inception, WORKhouse Theatre has been supporting emerging writers as well as exploring found texts for the purpose of creating exciting, provocative and necessary theatre. With Gwen Powers, we find ourselves able to bring a new, unique, and surprising voice to the Toronto stage. As a company of artists, it has been thrilling to watch the development and growth of both writer and
script alike. This play is undoubtedly entertaining and grips the audience through challenging preconceptions of what is right, what is wrong, and how we differentiate the two.
Gwen Powers is directed by Zachary Florence, a LAMDA trained director who has worked with such artists as Mark Ravenhill and Helena Kaut‐Howson. As a writer and composer, Zachary has been amassing credit and acclaim with the Shaw Festival, Acting UpStage, and Canadian Stage. WORKhouse Theatre is delighted to have him directing Michael Goldlist’s original play.
WORKhouse Theatre presents
GWEN POWERS
A new play by Michael Goldlist
Presented at Theatre Passe Muraille’s Backspace March 22nd‐April 6th, 2013
Tuesday‐Saturday 7:30pm and Saturday matinee at 2pm
$25/$15 (artist,student), PWYC matinee
Tickets on sale at www.workhousetheatre.com
Also available at the ARTS BOX OFFICE, HipTix, TOTix, and Eventbrite
Photo: Sofia Banzhaf as Gwen Powers. ©2013 WORKhouse Theatre
2013-03-22
Toronto: WORKhouse Theatre presents the world premiere of “Gwen Powers” March 22-April 6