Stage Door News
Stage Door News
Toronto, ON - lemonTree creations is inviting audiences to witness the culmination of a two week workshop of a new play: BODY POLITIC by Nick Green. BODY POLITIC re-imagines the story of The Body Politic, Canada’s most important queer publications, exploring its unique beginning, its community successes, its legal challenges and its eventual demise. This project is a commission of lemonTree creations and is currently in residency at Buddies In Bad Times Theatre.
Multiple award winner and current Artistic Director of the National Theatre School, Alisa Palmer, will be directing a stellar cast including Tyrone Guthrie Award winner Kent Staines (Stratford Festival), Kawa Ada (Bombay Dreams on Broadway) as well as featuring lemonTree creations’ own Cole Alvis (Gorey Story, Dora nominated) and Jonathan Seinen (The Normal Heart). Dramaturged by Brendan Healy (Buddies In Bad Times Theatre) the project also features an award winning design team including Michelle Ramsay (Lighting Design), Lindsay Anne-Black (Set/Costume Design) and Alex Williams (Video Design).
The Body Politic, published from 1971-87, remains the nation’s preeminent queer publication and a catalyst in the formation of Canada’s gay rights movement. Collectively owned, run, and operated, the newspaper housed the voices of over one hundred of Canada’s foremost queer activists, artists, and novelists. Many of the earliest contributors still influence the community today, working for Toronto Life, AIDS Action Now!, CATIE, and Pink Triangle Press, Canada’s most prominent queer media conglomeration and current publisher of XTRA!. With 16 years of archives available, The Body Politic survives as a living record of Canadian Queer history, narrating us through the LGBT’s struggles for equality: legal battles over censorship, raids by police, activist rallies, the onset of HIV/AIDS, and many issues, debates, and cultural phenomena from that time.
Nick Green is an award-winning playwright and actor based in Toronto. His plays have been seen all across Canada and in New York. Credits include Sexual Edumacation (Free Jane), Undercovered (Exposure Festival), Coffee Dad, Chicken Mom, and the Fabulous Buddha Boi (Winner of 3 Sterling Awards, published in Queering the Way), Left Field (Concrete Theatre), Two Queens and a Joker, and Triple Platinum (Guys in Disguise). Nick is the resident playwright for the Capitol Theatre in Edmonton, for which he has written eleven shows, including book and lyrics for the full-length musicals The Curse of Pigeon Lake, Love Letters, and Poof! The Musical.
The first reading of BODY POLITIC was presented to a sold-out house and much acclaim as part of Sky Gilbert’s Genderplay at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre during Pride 2012.
This project is being developed with the support of Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives. The first phase of development was also generously supported by OAC’s Theatre Creators’ Reserve Grant recommendations from Cabaret Company, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, and Fourth Line Theatre.
lemonTree creations is a Toronto-based theatre company that seeds new work, brings productions to fruition, and challenges artists to grow. Established in 2007, our core artistic team – Indrit Kasapi, Cole Alvis and Jonathan Seinen – work to realize innovative performance through non-conventional means and develop new Canadian plays by investing in artists and bringing rarely told stories to the stage.
WHAT: BODY POLITIC by NICK GREEN
WHO: lemonTree creations
WHEN: MAY 30, MAY 31, JUNE 1, 2013 @ 8 pm
WHERE: Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse
79 St George St #302 Toronto, ON
(Just south of Harbord St, on the east side of St. George Street)
TIX: $15 (Youth Group Discounts Available - $5 each for groups of 10 or more!)
Buy tickets online at www.bodypolitic.bpt.me or call 1-800-838-3006
2013-05-13
Toronto: lemonTree creations presents a theatrical re-imagining of the magazine “Body Politic” May 30-June 1