Stage Door News
Stage Door News
Toronto, ON – Outside the March is thrilled to premiere Vitals by Rosamund Small. In keeping with Outside the March’s commitment to making theatre a fully engaging, immersive and intimate event, Vitals is a site-specific production that plays for an audience of only 30 people –once you arrive at the arranged meeting place and are dispatched to the location of the evening’s emergency. 7 shows are already sold out and due to this overwhelming interest Vitals has just been extended an extra week and now runs April 29 – May 25.
Vitals is directed by Outside the March’s Co-Artistic Director Mitchell Cushman (Terminus, Mr. Marmalade) and stars OtM Associate Artist Katherine Cullen (Mr. Marmalade, Passion Play).
Vitals sends its audience on a 911 call, where they meet Anna, a Toronto paramedic on the brink. Based on real interviews conducted with local EMS workers, Vitals delves deep into the experiences of our city’s first responders, and explores the psychological impact of a daily routine of life, death, and bureaucracy.
Playwright Rosamund Small burst onto Toronto’s theatre scene two years ago with her verbatim look at Occupy Toronto; since then, she has been working in close collaboration with Outside the March. “Rosamund is fiercely intelligent, piercingly funny and endlessly compassionate,” says director Cushman “and she brings all of these qualities to bear beautifully in her examination of EMS work. Collaborating with her to create Vitals has been exhilarating. This is the first time OtM has developed a new play conceived of expressly for a site-specific production. The result, I think, will be an immersive experience quite unlike anything audiences will have seen before.”
Vitals is directed by Mitchell Cushman, the award-winning Co-Artistic Director of Outside the March. Cushman, widely considered to be one of the most exciting young directors in the country, was recently the recipient of the prestigious Siminovitch Protégé Award. His 2012 production of Terminus for OtM brought audiences right up onto the stage of the historic Royal Alex Theatre, and was notably selected by Mirvish Productions to premiere their inaugural Off-Mirvish season. Terminus was also one of the best-reviewed plays Toronto has seen in years, prompting NOW Magazine to write: “No director in 2012 earned such applause in such a short period of time.”
“I have deep respect for Mitchell’s work as a director and for Outside The March,” comments Theatre Passe Muraille Artistic Director Andy McKim. “They have done shows of such remarkable invention, amongst my favourite shows of the last few Toronto theatre seasons. Vitals is no exception and I can’t wait until the audience gets to see how thrilling this ride will be.”
Joining Cushman and Small on the creative team are performer Katherine Cullen (Mr. Marmalade, Passion Play) starring as Anna, production designer Anahita Dehbonehie (The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs), Sound Designer Samuel Sholdice (Passion Play), Costume Designer Shannon Lea Doyle (Soulpepper Academy), and producer Katherine Devlin Rosenfeld (Terminus Tour).
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About Outside the March
Outside the March is headed up by Co-Artistic Directors Mitchell Cushman and Simon Bloom, as well as a core Artistic team of Amy Keating, Katherine Cullen, Sebastien Heins and Managing Producer Katherine Devlin Rosenfeld. As a company, they are united by a shared passion for making theatre an event, and for promoting total audience immersion into the experience of performance. In the last three years, Outside the March has invited audiences into kindergarten classrooms, to parade with Queen Elizabeth along the Danforth, tinker in garages, congregate in churches, strategize across boardroom tables, and to join them onstage at the Royal Alexandra Theatre. The Grid recently hailed OtM as a company who “always creates a full theatrical experience… and never skimps on the details.”
The company’s production of Mark O’Rowe’s Terminus was selected by David Mirvish as the inaugural production of the Off-Mirvish season in the fall of 2012; it went on to be named the #1 show of the year by NOW Magazine, and is now in the midst of a cross-Canada tour. Other notable projects include two critically-acclaimed, sold-out runs of the Dora Award-winning Mr. Marmalade, staged in a kindergarten classroom (Outstanding Independent Production, 2013); The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, staged in a series of ten different secret locations across the country; and 2013’s Passion Play, a four-and-a-half hour, multi-location experience, named on virtually every Top 10 list of the year.
For more information visit outsidethemarch.ca <http://www.outsidethemarch.ca>
2014-03-27
Toronto: Outside the March presents "Vitals" April 29-May 25