Stage Door News
Stage Door News
Toronto, 1735. It is a starving time, with little food to last the long winter. The forest is cold, giant monsters haunt the darkness, and now that we’re here we’re all stuck together - forever.
When sisters Mary and Becky decide to flee religious persecution, poverty, and despair in England they end up in a land much less romantic than even their husbands. Together with a mysterious missionary and their new friend Abequa, they try to stay warm and fed in the harsh Canadian winter. What they don’t know is that something is hunting them. Something worse than an animal or a spirit. And when it catches them they will be trapped here forever. Stuck together for eternity for no reason other than desperation and circumstance, just like the rest of us.
On the eve of Canada’s 150th birthday, indie theatre mainstays Birdtown and Swanville offer a dark story of Canada’s earliest days. It is a fictional story based on the real people acting it out on stage that asks how could we all be friends and share a space and a life together if we were in the Canadian wilderness of the 18th Century.
Collaboratively co-created by collective, the show is directed by Aurora Stewart de Peña, with performances by Cara Gee (Strange Empire, The Penelopiad), Brett Donahue (We Are Proud to Present…, The Kennedy’s: After Camelot), Naomi Skwarna (All Our Happy Days Are Stupid), Donna Maloney (36 Little Plays about Hopeless Girls), Norman Yeung (Chimerica), and William Ellis (A Man Vanishes).
Led by creative director Nika Miztruzzi, the design team includes Andrew Zuckerman (sound), Allie Marshall, James Vanderklein, and Gustavo Cerquera Benjumea (set), Vanessa Fischer (costumes), Sofia Bohdanowicz (video), and Kristina McNamee (lights).
This is the seventh play from Toronto theatre collective Birdtown and Swanville, whose expressionistic and absurd brand of design conscious theatre has been playing in festivals, parks, galleries, and theatres since 2006. Their most recent show, Family Story played a sold out run at the 2013 Summerworks Festival and won the NTS Award for Design.
Birdtown and Swanville presents
Even This Old Town Was A Forest
October 15-23 at The Theatre Centre Incubator (1115 Queen St W)
Shows Tues-Sat 7pm, Sat-Sun 2pm
Tickets $25
Photo: William Ellis. ©2016 Natalie Novak.
2016-09-27
Toronto: "Even This Old Town Was a Forest" plays The Theatre Centre October 15-23