Stage Door News
Stage Door News
Toronto, ON – Theatre Passe Muraille (TPM) today announced details about its 2015.2016 season. The company continues to push beyond their walls to explore independent artistic visions, the voices and experiences of marginalized communities and an expanding interpretation of what theatre can be. This year the company has gone all out with artistic collaboration and development at the forefront, looking to the theatre’s future with premieres, new adaptations and exciting collaborations, while starting a celebration of their past with a four-year anniversary programming plan leading up to TPM’s 50th.
The TPM season includes a wide range of theatrical talent. There is a new adaptation by, and featuring, Severn Thompson of Douglas Glover’s Elle; which reinvents the beginnings of this country's history; a celebratory remount of past TPM sold-out hit Pyaasa, written by and starring Anusree Roy, as part of the 50th Anniversary production plan; Caught, a premiere by TPM resident playwright Jordi Mand; and in a collaboration with Cahoots Theatre, TPM brings award-winning Saskatoon writer, Adam Pottle’s Ultrasound, a story about Deaf culture, identity and family to the Mainspace. It will be performed in English and in ASL (American Sign Language) with surtitles.
“This season is about outliers. People who, for one reason or another, lie outside the enveloping status quo culture of their time and place. Some choose to stand apart, some to rebel. Others are set apart by a culture which deems them outside the fold,” said Artistic Director Andy McKim. “In our four plays this season the outliers serve to dramatize the undercurrents of injustice and misunderstanding in the status quo cultures that envelop them. For most of these characters, by standing up against these enveloping cultures, they are ennobled in our eyes. They even lead us, in some cases, to a new understanding of ourselves.”
Elle, adapted by Severn Thompson from the Governor General award-winning novel by Douglas Glover, is the first of four new shows produced by TPM in their upcoming season. Based on a true story, Elle chronicles the ordeals and adventures of a young French woman marooned on the desolate Isle of Demons in 1542 at the time of France's ill-fated third attempt to colonize Canada.
After the overwhelming success of the production’s first run in 2008, Theatre Passe Muraille remounts Anusree Roy’s Pyaasa launching a four-year programming plan to celebrate TPM’s 50th Anniversary. From now until 2019, Theatre Passe Muraille will be programming one play per season from the vast repertoire of work that has been produced at TPM. During its first run, Pyaasa was emblematic of TPM’s desire to present exciting emerging artists on their stage. TPM is pleased that the 2016 remount features the original creative team, including the now highly acclaimed writer/performer Anusree Roy.
The company is delighted to present TPM resident playwright Jordi Mand’s latest work Caught. Caught explores questions around gender politics, race, class, entitlement, blame and consequence. It looks at how our upbringing and the opportunities we are given define who we are and our ability to thrive in the world. It puts human interactions under a microscope and observes the various ways we hurt one another, and ourselves. Prior to its full run later in the season, Caught will be presented in a public workshop as part of its final leg of development through this year’s Buzz workshop series. Caught is being developed, in part, through The Collaborations, an initiative of the Canada’s National Arts Centre English Theatre.
As the fourth and final production of the 2015.16 Season, in collaboration with Cahoots Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille is pleased to co-produce Ultrasound, a debut play from award-winning Saskatoon writer Adam Pottle. In Ultrasound, Miranda, who is hard-of-hearing, and Alphonse, her Deaf husband, struggle with the identity of their potential family. Will their child be hearing or Deaf? Complications arise when their personal perspectives towards Deaf culture brim to the surface. Ultrasound will be performed in English and ASL (American Sign Language) with integrated surtitles and projection design.
The Within Our Walls: Guest Company Series, returns for a second year as Theatre Passe Muraille welcomes The National Theatre of The World to kick the series off with BARAM & SNIECKUS. A hybrid theatre piece of sketch comedy and improvisation, BARAM & SNIECKUS showcases the unique point of view and chemistry borne from being a real life comedy couple who satirize the male/female dynamic in all its complicated splendour. Matt Baram (Nickelodeon’s Make it Pop) and Naomi Snieckus (CBC’s Mr. D), come together as sketch comedy partners inspired by their day-to-day musings on life and love.
In the second Within Our Walls production, Theatre 20 will be presenting an exciting touring production, fresh off a sold-out national tour. Complete details will be announced at the Theatre 20 Season Launch Party on Monday, June 8th.
Theatre Passe Muraille will also be featuring a series of workshops this season through their Buzz Series as part of a play development initiative that allows for audience dramaturgy – the creation of new work with ongoing direct audience feedback. The presentations are at all stages of development. This season will feature workshops by resident artists & companies including Litmus Theatre, Jordi Mand, as well as evalyn parry and Brandy Leary of Anandam Dancetheatre. Dates to be announced.
The upcoming 2015.16 season features four original plays and a second year for their “Within Our Walls: Guest Company Series” carefully chosen by McKim to reaffirm TPM’s mandate to produce great Canadian theatre that is socially relevant and features budding as well as renowned artists, marginal voices and inventive, multi-disciplinary work.
“What is theatrically exciting about these plays is how dramatic the action is. We get to meet characters that are renegades, rebels and agitators. This is fun stuff. Each story is packed with conflict. These are characters with unique voices and strong worldviews, going head to head against big obstacles,” said Artistic Director Andy McKim, ”Plays like these are my idea of a good time in the theatre - subversive behaviour, conflict, strong characters, great writing and stories that are as emotionally gripping as they are politically charged.”
Theatre Passe Muraille gratefully acknowledges and celebrates the ongoing support of their annual Season Sponsor BMO Financial Group.
Theatre Passe Muraille 2015.16 Season
Elle
January 14 – 31, 2016
Based on a novel by Douglas Glover
Adapted by Severn Thompson
Directed by Christine Brubaker
Starring Severn Thompson & Brandon Oakes
A Theatre Passe Muraille Production
This is an adaptation of a Governor General award-winning novel by Douglas Glover. Based on a true story from the life of Marguerite de Roberval, Elle chronicles the ordeals and adventures of a young French woman marooned on the desolate Isle of Demons in 1542 at the time of France's ill-fated third attempt to colonize Canada.
The Sieur de Roberval abandons his unruly young niece, her lover, and her nurse on the Isle of Demons. With real bears, spirit bears, and perhaps hallucinated bears, with the residue of a somewhat lurid religious faith, and with a world of self-preserving belligerence, the voluble heroine of Elle does more than survive. Elle brilliantly reinvents the beginnings of this country's history: what Canada meant to the early European adventurers, what these Europeans meant to Canada's original inhabitants. While Marguerite de Roberval’s experience of Canada in 1592 is not as well known as Jacques Cartier’s, her open-minded engagement with that environment and its people was ahead of its time, and is certainly more relevant and inspiring for us today than Cartier’s attempt to colonize and conquer.
Pyaasa
March 3 – 27, 2016
By Anusree Roy
Directed by Thomas Morgan Jones
Starring Anusree Roy
Production Design by David DeGrow
A Theatre Passe Muraille Production
Originally created and produced by Theatre Jones Roy
Winner of 2 Dora Mavor Moore Awards for Best New Play & Outstanding Performance by a Female (Independent Division)
“I will never write something for mere entertainment. I have to write to change the world.” – Anusree Roy, Playwright/Performer
This will be the first of TPM’s 50th anniversary celebration plays from the canon of TPM productions. It was first produced in the company’s 2008-2009 season and was a sold-out success.
Set in Calcutta, Pyaasa (meaning “thirsty” in Hindi) tells the story of Chaya, an eleven-year-old untouchable who dreams of nothing more than learning her times tables. When Chaya's mother begs a woman from a higher caste to give Chaya a job at a local tea stall, Chaya's journey from childhood to adulthood begins and ends over ten days. A moving and heartfelt play, Pyaasa illustrates with subtlety and nuanced truth, the inequalities and injustices that persist through the Indian caste system. But it also speaks to anyone about the inequalities or injustices that are all around us here in Toronto.
Caught
March 31 – April 24, 2016
By Jordi Mand
Directed by Sarah Garton Stanley
A Theatre Passe Muraille Production
A young man sits in a shopping mall security holding room with the female security guard who caught him shoplifting. As he tries to lure her in, using any means necessary to get the charges dropped, they find themselves unexpectedly intertwined. When a police officer arrives to discover them alone together, chaos ensues.
Caught explores questions around gender politics, race, class, entitlement, blame and consequence. It looks at how our upbringing and the opportunities we are given define who we are and our ability to thrive in the world. It puts human interactions under a microscope and observes the various ways we hurt one another, and ourselves.
Caught is being developed - in part - through The Collaborations, an initiative of the Canada’s National Arts Centre English Theatre.
Jordi Mand’s recent play Between the Sheets has been produced across the country and abroad.
Ultrasound
April 28 – May 15, 2016
By Adam Pottle
Directed by Marjorie Chan
A Theatre Passe Muraille/Cahoots Theatre Co-Production
Miranda, who is hard-of-hearing, and Alphonse, her Deaf husband, struggle with the identity of their potential family. Will their child be hearing or Deaf? Complications arise when their personal perspectives towards Deaf culture brim to the surface. A debut play from award-winning Saskatoon fiction and poetry writer Adam Pottle.
Ultrasound will be performed in English and ASL (American Sign Language) with integrated surtitles and projection design.
Within Our Walls: The Guest Company Series
Theatre Passe Muraille values collaboration in all its forms.
As well as producing our own plays, we also host other companies Within Our Walls. In this season’s Guest Company Series we have both chosen, and invited, two independent companies to produce at TPM, with institutional support coming from us. We believe in these artists and are hosting them in order to help increase their profile and support the advancement of their plays, while introducing their work to TPM audiences.
The first piece is The National Theatre of the World’s production of BARAM & SNIECKUS. The second is a production presented by Theatre 20 to be announced June 8th.
BARAM & SNIECKUS
October 21 – November 1, 2015
Produced by The National Theatre of the World
With the support of Theatre Passe Muraille
BARAM & SNIECKUS showcases the unique point of view and chemistry borne from being a real life comedy couple who satirize the male/female dynamic in all its complicated splendour. Lifelong man, Matt Baram (Nickelodeon’s Make it Pop) and expert woman, Naomi Snieckus (CBC’s Mr. D), come together as sketch comedy partners inspired by their day-to-day musings on life and love.
This award-winning comedy duo has created a hybrid theatre piece - some sketch, some improvisation - all laughs! From that familiar awkward first kiss with your cousin to the unexplored territory of “spaceship infidelity”, the story of men and women will be told through a satirical sketch comedy lens, allowing these performer/writers to deliver their own personal experiences, fully heightened and explored in a unique comedic way.
Their sharp wit and electric chemistry are captivating. Come see the duo that Time Out Chicago called “Equal parts funny and tragic”. NOW Magazines says they have “Care, craft and comic genius”. The Halifax Chronicle Herald wrote: “If the Canadian government could recognize artistic excellence as well as it does athletic excellence, these actors would be household names in Canada.”
(To be announced)
February 3 – 21, 2016
Presented by Theatre 20
With the support of Theatre Passe Muraille
Theatre 20 will be presenting an exciting touring production, fresh off a sold-out national tour. Complete details will be announced at the Theatre 20 Season Launch Party on Monday, June 8th.
Buzz: New Play Development Series
The Buzz Program is focused on putting the development process in front of an audience. This is designed to give the creative artists some audience feedback. Buzz also provides the theatre with a way to give that audience the tools they need to participate, with confidence, in a discussion of new work. Before the presentation of each piece, Andy McKim invites the Artist to speak about the show. This is their chance to give the Audience some insight into the Artist’s creative process and to elaborate on the current stage of development for the work. This is followed by a specific question period, a mix-and-mingle with artist and audience and a follow-up Buzz Debrief between Andy and the artists to follow-up on the audience feedback.
Theatre Passe Muraille’s Buzz program recognizes that theatre is no longer created by one person writing a script – a “play” can no longer be separated from the notion of showing the work, since artists are not creating literary scripts, but developing performances. And developing performances that deal very directly and concretely with a relationship with an audience - a relationship that cannot be rehearsed, only tested. This program separates itself from others and can fill a missing link in the ecology of new work creation in Toronto.
- Jacob Zimmer, Artistic Director, Small Wooden Shoe
BUZZ is a revolutionary idea to bring in an engaged audience to watch a new show on its feet, rather than a reading, which gives them a much clearer taste of the work. Many audience members said to me over beer afterwards that they can't wait to see what comes next, which is not only inspiring for a creator to hear but signifies that they will be back to see the next step of the work, and will feel invested as they put their two cents in comment wise. A very smart, forward-thinking program.
- Anna Chatterton, playwright/performer
Caught
By Jordi Mand
2015 in the TPM Backspace
There will be a week-long workshop to focus on the play in greater detail and with an eye to how the play will be staged as part of Theatre Passe Muraille’s 2015.16 season in that venue.
Brave New World
By Aldus Huxley
Adapted by Matthew Thomas Walker
A production of Litmus Theatre
With the support of Theatre Passe Muraille
Fall 2015 in a site-specific location (TBD)
Litmus Theatre is a Resident Company with Theatre Passe Muraille and is also one of STAF's Inaugural Annual Resident Companies. Both organizations are supporting Litmus as they develop and stage an immersive, site-specific theatre production based on Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. At the end of an intensive 2-week period, this new Canadian adaptation will culminate with 3 public showings as part of TPM’s Buzz Series.
To Live in the Age of Melting
By evalyn parry
Fall 2015 in the TPM Mainspace
To Live in the Age of Melting is a new collaborative creation from performance innovator and musician evalyn parry and visual/video artist Elysha Poirier. Embarking on an evocative visual and sonic journey that travels from Franklin's doomed 19th century expedition to contemporary Arctic sovereignty, from climate change to the human nervous system, the show investigates what the Arctic means to Canada and what Canada means to the Arctic. Integrating music, radio documentary, personal and crowd-sourced storytelling, the show invites the audience into a longitudinal conversation between the Canadian North and South. Along the way, it probes the nature of colonial legacy, tradition and untold histories. What happens when old, frozen parts of the world we know - and parts of ourselves - begin to melt?
Seismology
Created by Brandy Leary of Anandam Dancetheatre
With the support of Theatre Passe Muraille
Fall 2015 in the TPM Mainspace
Seismology is a visceral, interdisciplinary journey into our experiences of environmental decline.
Memory loss, melting, fault lines, extreme opposites, seismic waves, little earth quakes, ropes, ice and dirt set the stage for Anandam Dancetheatre’s newest performance offering. Working in the spaces of radical hope, imaginary landscapes, psychic transmissions and shamanistic frequencies we invite you into the intimate, immersive and participatory world of Seismology.
Seismology is a performance collaboration between Choreographer Brandy Leary, Sonic Artist/Composer James Bunton, Visual/Video Artist Eamon Mac Mahon, Dramaturge Soraya Peerbaye, LX Designer Siobhan Sleath and dance/circus artists Amy Hampton, Ryan Lee, Marie France Forcier, Laura Stokes, Michael Caldwell and Louis Laberge-Côté and has been supported by a creation process involving our inaugural AIR (Audience in Residence) initiative.
Anandam creates live performances that explore the body as a curious and shifting filter for diverse viewpoints and practices. Performances are created from dissonant sources in alternative spaces or re-visioned traditional ones, and the aesthetic interest is polycultural.
Facebook: TheatrePasseMuraille
Twitter: beyondwallsTPM #tpm1516
Photo: Anusree Roy in Pyaasa. ©2008 Aviva Armour-Ostroff.
2015-05-20
Toronto: Theatre Passe Muraille announces its 2015/16 season