Stage Door News
Stage Door News
From the creative team who brought you the SummerWorks hit Tragedy: A Tragedy comes the strange and moving story of a man who finds himself a little lost on the journey to find a place he might call “home.”
TITLE AND DEED
by Will Eno
Directed by Stewart Arnott
Starring Christopher Stanton
Stage Managed by Beth Wong
Produced by Bonnie Anderson
TITLE AND DEED is helmed by one of this season’s hottest directors Stewart ARNOTT (Seminar [Mirvish/MTC], The Swearing Jar, Vincent River), who recently directed Will Eno’s Tragedy: A Tragedy. That production received the SummerWorks Spotlight Award (for the performing ensemble) and nods from NOW Magazine for Outstanding Direction, Production and Ensemble.
The show - with its intimate setup and extremely limited seating - stars Dora Award-Winning performer Christopher STANTON (Assassins, New Electric Ballroom, A Quiet Place) as the expatriate of an unnamed homeland who finds himself alone in a new country seeking connection and redemption through the strangers by whom he is now surrounded.
This November, Mr. Arnott and Mr. Stanton team up again with one of America’s most exciting theatrical voices — Will ENO (The Realistic Joneses, Thom Pain (based on nothing), The Open House). This will be the Canadian premiere of Eno’s latest dramatic solo show, TITLE AND DEED. The New York Times said of TITLE AND DEED, “The marvel of Mr. Eno’s voice is how naturally it combines a carefully sculptured lyricism with sly, poker-faced humour. Everyday phrases and familiar platitudes are turned inside out or twisted into blunt, unexpected punch lines punctuating long rhapsodic passages that leave you happily word-drunk.” The New Yorker raved, “In this tale’s brilliant telling, it is not the narrator who proves unreliable but life itself. The unspoken message of Eno’s smart, bleak musings seems to be: enjoy the nothingness while you can.”
"When I first read this play,” Mr. Arnott says, “I thought I'd discovered Samuel Beckett's long lost (American!) grandson. A chip off the old block, but then, completely his own man. Will Eno's profound love of and fear for the human race and his remarkable explorations of how we rather desperately hang onto our lives and minds and hearts simply keeps me coming back for more. I know no other contemporary playwright who can show me the abyss and then make me laugh at it in quite the way Mr. Eno can. Title and Deed, about a man who believes that if he can define 'home' once and for all will find the missing key to meaning in his life, is sublime Eno.”
“When Stewart brought me this script, I was immediately spellbound by Eno’s rich, deeply lyrical language,” says Mr. Stanton about TITLE AND DEED. “He’s a master at crafting beautifully intelligent, playful works that occupy a place simultaneously absurd yet familiar, mundane yet mysterious and magical. And this character’s journey abroad to make himself into something better - into something beautiful - really resonated with me. I think many of us feel rootless in our lives, for many reasons, and this struggle is one many of us can relate to. And - at a time when a divisive national dialogue is focussed on how we welcome ‘outsiders’ here in Canada - the telling of such stories becomes more important than ever.”
TITLE AND DEED runs November 24 to December 6. Performances 8pm Tuesday through Saturday; 2pm & 7.30pm Sundays.
Playing at Artscape Youngplace (180 Shaw Street, Toronto, ON). This is a wheelchair accessible venue
Tickets are all $24 (plus service charges), and are available at brownpapertickets.com or at the door before each performance.
Photo: Christopher Stanton. ©2015 Bonnie Anderson.
2015-10-21
Toronto: Nightfall Theatrics presents the Canadian premiere of "Title and Deed" November 24-December 6