Stage Door News
Stage Door News
Theatre Rusticle is pleased to present Thornton Wilder’s Our Town at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre March 26th to April 2nd 2017.
Thornton Wilder’s 1938 Pulitzer Prize winning drama collides with multi-award nominated Theatre Rusticle’s imagistic and physically poetic style to tell the story of “the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying” in the fictional town of Grover’s Corners.
Directed by Dora Nominated artistic director Allyson McMackon, the company’s hallmark physicality meets Wilder’s timeless questions about how place defines us, how we live, how we love and our place in this big universe.
Spanning 12 years from 1901-1913, Wilder’s play is set in a fictional town called Grover’s Corners. The play in three acts is the story of life in this town focusing on the Webb and Gibbs families. As the act titles tell us, the play is about Daily Life, Love and Marriage, and Death and Dying. Wilder’s play was considered innovative at the time for it’s use of “meta-theatrical” conventions, specifically the absence of set and props, the exposure of the theatre space itself, direct audience address and the creation of a Stage Manager as a central commentator. While scenes are structured naturalistically, Wilder plays with time, memory, and asks metaphysical questions about the universe and the meaning of our lives as well as questions about the value of the institution of marriage and other societal structures. Experimental in its day, Our Town remains a profound study of our humanity.
Our Town features an ensemble of emerging and established artists, actors, dancers, designers and interdisciplinary artists including Dora nominated performers Hume Baugh (Crush), François Macdonald (Les Zinspirés puissance Quatre), Lucy Rupert (Eunoia), and Viv Moore (multiple Dora nominations). It also features performers Sarah Machin Gale (Theatre Gargantua), Geoffrey Whynot (Globe Theatre), Matthew Finlan (Shaw Festival 2016), Priscilla Taylor (Theatre by the Bay), and introduces Augusto Bitter (Tideline) and Saskatoon Theatre Award Nominee Jenna-Lee Hyde (making her Toronto debut). Lighting Design is by multiple Dora and Pauling McGibbon Award winner Michelle Ramsay, Costume Design by Dora nominated Brandon Kleiman and Stage Management by Merritt Award winner Sarah O’Brien.
Theatre Rusticle has collaborated with Buddies in Bad Times with the acclaimed Dinner at Seven- Thirty (2013) and The Stronger Variations (2014). They have also partnered with Harbourfront Centre (April 14, 1912), Theatre Passe Muraille (Birnam Wood), and have received 12 Dora Mavor Moore Award. Artistic director Allyson McMackon was named an artist to watch by Now Magazine for the 2017 season. The company performed at the prestigious Magnetic North Theatre Festival, Supernova and toured Western Canada with April 14, 1912. Their work has been hailed as “sheer brilliance” (The Globe and Mail), that “sails into uncharted terrain where theatre meets dance, words meet movement and set design is an extension of your imagination” (The Vancouver Province).
Our Town
By Thornton Wilder
Presented by Theatre Rusticle
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre * 12 Alexander Street, Toronto Preview March 26 at 2:30pm * Opening March 28 at 8pm
* March 27-April 1 at 8pm * Matinees April 1 and 2 at 2:30pm Tickets PWYC - $28 * Group Rates available
Box Office: (416) 975-8555 * https://buddiesinbadtimes.com/tickets
theatrerusticle@gmail.com * https://theatrerusticlewordpresscom.wordpress.com/
Featuring: Hume Baugh, Augusto Bitter, Matthew Finlan, Sarah Gale, Jenna-Lee Hyde, François Macdonald, Viv Moore, Lucy Rupert, Priscilla Taylor, Geoffrey Whynot. Stage Management by Sarah O’Brien
Costume Design by Brandon Kleiman* Lighting Design by Michelle Ramsay Direction by Allyson McMackon
NO LATECOMERS * NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN UNDER 14
2017-02-27
Toronto: Theatre Rusticle presents its version of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" March 26-April 2