Stage Door News
Stage Door News
A remount of one of Theatre Rusticle’s first productions, Dinner at Seven-Thirty is inspired by Virginia Woolf’s ground breaking 1931 novel, The Waves. Woolf’s novel is a series of inner monologues told by a group of friends from their school days to their late adult life. In a nutshell, they play in a garden, grow up and go to separate schools, universities, fall in love with a seventh friend, survive his death, marry, travel, work, have children and approach the end of their lives.
And Rusticle leaps from there!
Dinner at Seven-Thirty is a physical memory play combining text, movement and thrilling visual imagery. Set at a reunion dinner, six friends revisit what that binds them and ask the potent question, “What have we made of life? What matters?” A bitter sweet last supper between six disparate souls, Dinner at Seven-Thirty binds these characters by history and a shared heartbeat.
“It's a tremendous experience. Buddies is the venue I had always seen the show in and I am only grateful that they are opening their doors to us for this project,” said Allyson McMackon, Artistic Director. I’m delighted to be working with them and I only hope we can offer their theatre something powerful and of great beauty.”
She added, “Dinner was our first production outside of a festival setting and it ran for a mere seven performances. I have always wanted to return to it. It was an early reflection of our physical process of making theatre, had limited design and production elements, and it always felt unfinished. We were also a group of younger artists for whom the question of what we have made of our lives did not have a big resonance. We were making our lives and the poignancy and urgency of that question was not that developed. Our experience now continues to prove and question these revelations with each new project. I am ready to look at Dinner again, with the benefit of artistic and life experience.”
When asked what she was looking forward to with this work, McMackon replied, “What am I looking forward to? I am looking forward to lighting levels with Michelle (Ramsay). I am looking forward to seeing a cloud of birds and how we get a character to "fall into" that piece of sky. I am looking forward to working with these exceptional Rusticles who actually say "yes" to the exploration and dive in full of joy, fear, imagination. I am looking forward to us conjuring ourselves, our friends. I am looking forward to glittery dresses and Cab Calloway.”
Theatre Rusticle
Dinner at Seven Thirty- based on Virginal Woolf’s The Waves
Directed by Allyson McMackon
Featuring Hume Baugh, Andrya Duff, Thomas Morgan Jones, Ron Kennell, Viv Moore, Lucy Rupert and William Yong
Set Design by Lindsay Anne Black, Costume Design by R. Kelly Clipperton, Lighting Design by Michelle Ramsay
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre 12 Alexander Street, Toronto
Previews October 12 & 13
Opens October 15, runs to October 20
Tickets: $18-$31 (416) 975-8555 or visit the box office
Theatre Rusticle is an independent physical theatre company formed in 1998 by Allyson McMackon. We create original and daring work inspired by plays, poems, history and literature with an eye to the relationship between text and movement. We are committed to creating plays that are spare yet image drenched and embrace the language of text and the body. Like the rusticles we are named after, we eat away at the raw material of our sources and leave beautiful, haunting forms behind. Our raw material is text, the body, emotion and narrative. “Toronto’s Best Movement Based Theatre Company”, Now Magazine. Our forms are the plays we create.
Photo: Diana Kolpak and David-Benjamin Tomlinson. ©2012 Tariq Kieran.
2013-09-12
Toronto: Theatre Rusticle presents “Dinner at Seven-Thirty” based on “The Waves” October 12-20