Stage Door News
Stage Door News
Rome: an Italian mime jumps off a building claiming no one appreciates his art. Moscow: in his cramped apartment composer Shostakovich & his wife live through the grotesque, carnivalesque paranoia of Stalin’s Russia, awaiting imminent arrest.
After a smash hit success at this year’s SummerWork’s festival w ith Empire Of Night, Bad New Days returns with yet another provocative genre bending piece, their first fullscale production since multiDora winner The Double. Italian Mime Suicide// Three Red Days is an exciting new double bill based on two true anecdotes from the lives of two very different artists, exploring the intersection of art, politics & ideology; the relationship between melancholy and levity; and ultimately asking how can art remain vital in times when culture itself is endangered?
Directed by Bad New Days founder, Adam Paolozza, (Spent Bad New Days/Theatre SmithGilmour/Why Not Theatre; The Double Bad New Days, Tarragon Theatre, NAC, Melancholiac SummerWorks) this production continues the company’s experimentation fusing music, image and gesture to create a space for physical, nontraditionally narrative based storytelling.
In an additional exercise of the non-traditional, Bad New Days is working to change our relationship with regards to payment structures for art. There will be no admission fee for Italian Mime Suicide// Three Red Days. Audience members will be able to watch the show “for free” and decide afterwards how much they want to pay based on their experience/income/etc. The show will be accessible to anyone while also challenging the ideology that art is a commodity to be bought and sold.
The set & lighting design by Dora award nominated Anahita Dehbonehie (Soulpepper Academy; Vitals Out side the March; Breath Of Kings Stratford Festival) and multi Dora award-winning Andre Du Toit (The Double Bad New Days; As I Lay Dying Theatre SmithGilmour; Mouthpiece Quote Unquote Collective) for Three Red Days allows audience members to walk around and peer inside the cramped apartment of Shostakovich up close, making evident every bead of sweat and nervous flicker of anticipation as he awaits the fateful NKVD knock at his door.
Italian Mime Suicide is scored by a three piece live band, featuring musicians Arif Mirabdolbaghi, Justin Ruppel and Bruce Mackinnon, with stunning visual projections and design inspired by Picasso by Dehbonehie and Du Toit, inviting you into the old world melancholy glamour of the suicidal mime. The cast is comprised of four of Toronto’s most interesting physical performers including Adam Paolozza, Viktor Lukawski (The Double, Bad New Days; Ignorance The Old Trout Puppet Workshop; Business As Usual ZOU theatre company), Miranda Calderon (11.22.63 Hulu; Prima Donna New York City Opera / Luminato; Taking Care of Baby The Storefront Theatre) and Robert Freetham ( Tale of a Town Canada Fixt Point, Les Moutons/Flock of Flyers Corpus Dance Projects.)
With one eye on the past and one eye on the future, Italian Mime Suicide // Three Red Days’ unconventional, physically charged and highly imagistic storytelling promises to challenge our notions of what an evening at the theatre can be.
Italian Mime Suicide // Three Red Days
Directed by Adam Paolozza
Created by The Company
October 8th 23rd
Preview October 7th
Wed Sat 8:30 Sun 3:30
Pay What You Want. EVERY.SINGLE.NIGHT Theatre Centre Mainspace 1115 Queen St W, Toronto
2016-09-16
Toronto: Bad New Days presents a genre-bending double-bill "Italian Mime Suicide / Three Red Days"