Stage Door News
Stage Door News
Artistic Producer Arkady Spivak announced our 2018-2019 season today. This year we invite you to experience a wickedly funny rock-‘n-roll musical; an interactive and emotionally powerful one-man show; a gender-fluid version of a mischievous comedic classic; and a double-bill of world premiere works, featuring a modern-day revival of a Sophocles play, and a gripping musical theatre performance by a local, sensational artist.
Details for the season are as follows:
November 22 to December 1, 2018; Opening Night on November 23, 2018
David Ball in
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
Book by John Cameron Mitchell, Music and Lyrics by Stephen Trask
Directed by Joe Pagnan
Brilliantly innovative, heartbreaking, and wickedly funny, Hedwig and the Angry Inch is the genre-bending, fourth-wall-smashing rock musical sensation, with a pulsing score and wickedly funny story of a gender-crossed glam rocker determined to become a superstar.
Ground-breaking and undoubtedly ahead of its time (Entertainment Weekly)
The most exciting rock score written for the theatre since, oh, ever! (Time Magazine)
January 24 to February 2, 2019; Opening Night on January 25
Michael Torontow in
Every Brilliant Thing
Written by Duncan MacMillan with Jonny Donahoe
Directed by Steven Schipper
In Association with the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre
This wonderful, interactive play charts the lengths we go to for those we love. With his mother in hospital, a young boy constructs a list of little things to help her find a way to be happy. From ice-cream and Kung Fu movies, to Christopher Walken’s voice and laughing so hard you shoot milk through your nose.
In this raw, real and intimate piece of theatre,
what begins as a naïve way of dealing with tragedy becomes a life-long reminder that joy can be found in the seemingly insignificant – that the unremarkable can, in fact, become something quite remarkable.
Heart-wrenching, hilarious … possibly one of the funniest plays you’ll ever see, full stop. (The Guardian)
March 28 to April 6, 2019; Opening Night on March 29, 2019
The Gamblers
by Nikolai Gogol
Directed by Esther Jun
Nobody is what they seem in Nikolai Gogol’s comedy of card sharps and confidence tricksters. Before long we’re dealing with deceits within deceits within deceits. And just when we think you have it all worked out, we realize the jokers are pulling the wool over our very eyes. This new gender-fluid version is a story of people who gamble, hustle and cheat.
Two and two make five, if not the square root of five, and it all happens quite naturally in Gogol’s world…Gogol was a strange creature, but then genius is always strange (Vladimir Nabokov)
April 25 to May 4, 2019; Opening Night on April 26, 2019
Double Bill of World Premieres:
Newfie Electra
Written by and starring Allison Basha
Director to be confirmed
Newfie Electra is a modern day adaptation of a classic, Electra, by Sophocles. We are in a small out-port fishing village in Newfoundland. The main character, Tanya, is grieving the death of her Fadder at the hand of her Mudder. She spends day in and day out submerged at the fish plant plotting her next step. She wants revenge. Between the jigs and the reels, we explore the storytelling of this wacky character and what it’s like to live in her shoes. Will she honor her Fadder and avenge his death? Only time will tell.
Music For The Changing Voice:
My grandfather’s cello, and all the tiny pieces
Created by and starring Alyssa Wright
Director to be confirmed
Performing her original songs, music she was raised with, and even some tunes by the late Don Wright himself, Alyssa weaves together a tale about growing up in his musical shadow and under his silencing oppression – then eventually using the cello and other tools she’d inherited to find her own voice, heal from the past, and turn even the most shattered bits into art.
TIFT projects on other stages
The Curious Voyage, the 3-day immersive theatrical journey to London, UK, in which each patron is a protagonist in the story they are watching, and live as a work of art. More information at www.curiousvoyage.com and Toronto Star Article.
The Wedding Party, our co-production (with Crow’s Theatre) of a comedy by Kristen Thomson, will be presented at the National Arts Centre in the Ottawa. Click here for more information.
Tales of an Urban Indian, staged on a moving city bus, continues to tour to Halifax and North Vancouver in September; and to Ottawa, Saint John, Adelaide, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand next Winter and Spring.
Early-bird subscriptions for the 2018-2019 Season will be available until Friday, June 29, 2018. Single tickets will be available as of Monday July 23, 2018.
Photo: David Ball. ©2018 Shaw Festival.
2018-05-23
Barrie: Talk Is Free Theatre announces its 2018/19 season