Stage Door News
Stage Door News
“Toronto’s enterprising One Little Goat Theatre Company” (New York Times) has been awarded an Ontario Trillium Foundation Grant to perform the company’s first play for young audiences in 40 Model Schools for Inner Cities. As a result, the production will reach 10,000 children in the Toronto District School Board this fall, free of charge.
With over a decade of acclaimed productions for adult audiences, One Little Goat makes its theatre-for-young-audiences debut with PLAY: A (Mini) History of Theatre for Kids, a new work written and directed by Artistic Director Adam Seelig.
PLAY will also have its public premiere at this year’s Book Bash Canadian Children’s Literature Festival, hosted by the Toronto Public Library at the International Festival of Authors. The performance takes place at the Harbourfront Studio Theatre, Saturday, October 22, 2016, 2 p.m. Admission is free. More information is available at ifoa.org/participants/one-little-goat-theatre and OneLittleGoat.org.
Beginning with such classic children’s games as tag, PLAY: A (Mini) History of Theatre for Children is a dynamic introduction to some of the world’s most enduring and innovative games called “plays.” Actors Richard Harte and “Mavis-the-Sometimes-Cat” (Jessica Salgueiro, alternating with Rochelle Bulmer) are featured in a performance that guides elementary school audiences (Grades 1-6) through four distinct periods of drama:
1Early Beginnings: games around the fire
2Ancient Greek Tragedy: Antigone by Sophocles
3Japanese Noh Theatre: Zeami and 14th-Century Noh
4Modern Theatre: Alfred Jarry, Gertrude Stein and Samuel Beckett
PLAY makes the case that dramatic play is rooted in childhood games, empowering children as natural-born play-makers. PLAY also features music and dance performed by the actors.
PLAY introduces elementary school children to dramatic material rarely, if ever, performed for them. “Of the 1,500 school kids we have already performed for,” Seelig comments, “I’ve noticed that while Antigone is intense, the children are very focused and engaged; even though Noh is complex, they grasp it; and if 20th-century modernism seems bizarre to us, they love it. Elementary school students have few preconceptions, so they’re open to these wonderful dramatic moments we perform for them. My hope is that PLAY, like the first performances I saw in my school’s gym growing up, will spark a lifelong love of the arts.”
PLAY also addresses important childhood issues. The excerpt from the Greek tragedy Antigone shows the courage it takes to oppose tyranny, or bullying. Another issue addressed by PLAY, not explicitly but implicitly, is gender equality, by representing an equal number of male and female characters.
Now entering its 11th year, the TDSB Model School for Inner Cities program identifies 150 schools throughout the GTA with a large concentration of students living with limited resources, and aims to provide them with the opportunities they need to participate fully and equally in their schools and communities. With PLAY, One Little Goat is creating access to high-calibre performing arts by touring from school to school at no cost to Model Schools.
Adam Seelig is a poet, playwright, stage director, and founder of Toronto’s One Little Goat Theatre Company. Born and raised in Vancouver, Seelig has also lived in northern California, New York, England and Israel. He is the author of the long-poem-novella Every Day in the Morning (slow) (New Star Books, shortlisted for the 2011 ReLit Award). Some of his previous plays include Antigone:Insurgency (Toronto 2007), Talking Masks (Toronto 2009), Like the First Time (Toronto 2011) and Ubu Mayor (Toronto 2014) – a number of which are published by BookThug. Seelig is the recipient of a Commonwealth Fellowship and a Stanford Golden Grant for his work on Samuel Beckett’s manuscripts. He was a 2014 RBC Director at Canadian Stage.
One Little Goat, North America’s only company devoted to contemporary poetic theatre, “has done audiences a huge service” (Toronto Star) through its highly interpretive, provocative approach to new and international plays. For over a decade, the company's Canadian and world premieres have garnered praise from the New York Times, Globe and Mail, Economist, NOW, CBC and others. More information on the company is available at www.OneLittleGoat.org.
PLAY is generously supported by the Ontario Trillium Foundation, Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, TD Bank, Irish Cultural Society of Toronto and the Embassy of Ireland in Ottawa.
Photo: Jessica Salgueiro and Richard Harte. ©2016 One Little Goat.
2016-10-18
Toronto: One Little Goat's first play for young audiences opens October 22 and will tour to 40 schools