Stage Door News
Stage Door News
The Passionate Players
– a community theatre fundraising initiative from
two of Canada’s leading immersive theatre companies
Outside the March
and
Convergence Theatre
– returns
for their fifth production, this time the
World Premiere of
A COMMUNITY TARGET.
Written and compiled by emerging Canadian playwright
Robert Motum,
the play is directly lifted from interviews with scores of former
Target Canada customers and employees, from cashiers all the way to
the CEO and everyone in between.
On January 15, 2015, less than two years after they opened their
first Canadian stores, Target announced that they would be
discontinuing operations in Canada. At the time, the story was
analysed by every business critic and financial pundit on
television; they spoke about numbers, shareholders, and stocks.
What was strikingly absent from this conversation, however, were
the voices of the 17,600 Canadians who had just lost their jobs and
had their lives upheaved.
A COMMUNITY TARGET
shares these stories in an intimate, personal and communal way.
The production will be performed in and around one of Toronto’s oldest
cinemas and one-time vaudeville house –
The Regent Theatre,
on Mount Pleasant Ave. just north of Davisville. The production
will be staged in a promenade style, giving audience members the
opportunity to explore every inch of this historic building – true
to the immersive identities of the two producing companies: Outside
the March (Dr. Silver, Jerusalem, TomorrowLove)
and Convergence Theatre (The Unending, The Gladstone Variations,
Yichud).
The production will be co-directed by OtM’s Artistic
Director
Mitchell Cushman,
Convergence’s Co-Artistic Director
Aaron Willis
and OtM’s Associate Artistic Director
Griffin McInnes,
and designed by OtM’s Dora-Award Winning Head of Design
Nick Blais.
True to the people at the heart of its story,
A Community Target
will
feature a cast of thirty community members
- non-professional performers who are participants in the The
Passionate Players Program. Now in its fifth year,
The Passionate Players
is a benefit endeavour from Outside the March and Convergence
Theatre. The program offers community members interested in gaining
hands-on experience in theatre the opportunity to train and
participate in a full-fledged production. All proceeds from the
production go to supporting the not-for-profit creative endeavours
of both companies. Previous Passionate Players Productions
include
ReCast: Scenes from TomorrowLove & AutoShow
(2017),
Our Town
(2015),
A Midwinter Night’s Dream
(2014) and
The Lady from Maxim’s
(2013).
A Community Target
plays at the
Regent Theatre
(551 Mount Pleasant Rd, Toronto, ON) on:
at
at
at
&
at
Note: The main floor of the Regent Theatre is wheelchair
accessible.
Visit us on Facebook at
facebook.com/passionateplayers.
Tickets can be purchased at brownpapertickets.com (communitytarget.bpt.me).
2018-11-01
Toronto: Outside the March and Convergence Theatre combine to present "The Rise and Fall of Target Canada"