Stage Door News

Toronto: Parry Riposte presents “Dressed as People” March 7-18

Tuesday, January 10, 2023

Winner of the 2021 Ottawa Fringe Online Audience Choice & Outstanding Solo Performance awards, Dressed as People – a Triptych of Uncanny Abduction finds a school haunted by troubled children; an encounter with the unknown on open waters; the mysterious disappearance of a friend in the woods. Three different characters, time periods, spine-tingling tales of paranormal abduction and the intrusion of the uncanny into the lives of those who are taken, those who do the taking, and those who are left behind.

Multi award-winning theatre creators and horror and speculative fiction writers team up for this chilling new show from the producers of the smash hit, The Elephant Girls. These internationally renowned, queer, Canadian, fiction writers now tackle writing for the theatre. The three monologues that make up Dressed as People are:

Kelly Robson, “Skinless”

In 1989, while teaching Canadian Literature at a university in Edmonton, a nun reveals her past as a young instructor at a haunted school full of troubled children in 1950s Ireland.

Amal El-Mohtar, “The Shape of My Teeth”

In 1827, a woman reflects on her best friend's mysterious disappearance in Mortimer Forest on the Welsh border. She refuses to be left behind.

A.M. Dellamonica, “Repositioning”

In 2021, a seasoned entertainer on the lesbian cruise circuit grapples with memories of an encounter with the unknown in 2018, on a Pacific Ocean repositioning cruise headed to Vancouver, B.C. from Sydney, Australia.


Dressed as People – a Triptych of Uncanny Abduction

by Parry Riposte Productions

March 7th - 18th, 2023

at Red Sandcastle Theatre ✦ 922 Queen Street East

Tickets $20 Tuesdays / $30 Advance / $40 Door

Pay-What-You-Can Matinees

redsandcastletheatre.com

Masks Mandatory | HEPA Filtered Theatre

7:00PM Doors/7:30 Showtime

3:00PM Doors/3:30 Showtime

75 minutes - no intermission


About the Artists:

Amal El-Mohtar - Playwright

Amal is an award-winning writer of fiction, poetry, and criticism. She’s the science fiction and fantasy columnist for the New York Times Book Review. She has won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards. Amal is the author of numerous short stories including, Seasons of Glass and Iron, and co-author with Max Gladstone of This Is How You Lose the Time War.

Kelly Robson - Playwright

Kelly Robson is an award winning writer of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. Her books include Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach, High Times in the Low Parliament, and the short fiction collection Alias Space and Other Stories. She won the 2018 Nebula Award for Best Novelette and her short fiction won the 2022, 2019, and 2016 Aurora Awards. She has also been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Theodore Sturgeon, Locus, Astounding, Aurora, and Sunburst awards.

A.M. Dellamonica - Playwright

A.M. Dellamonica's first novel, Indigo Springs, won the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Their fourth, A Daughter of No Nation, won the 2016 Prix Aurora for Best Novel. They have published stories in Tor.com, Asimovs SF and elsewhere, along with poetry and pop culture essays. Their newest novels, Gamechanger and Dealbreaker, were released under the name L.X. Beckett and are solarpunk adventures that imagine humanity surviving climate.

Mary Ellis - Director

Mary has worked extensively as a director, actor and educator for many years, and has received numerous awards and nominations for her work. For Parry Riposte Productions, she directed the multi-award winning The Elephant Girls. She currently teaches at Carleton University and St Lawrence College. She is also the Artistic Director of Horseshoes and Hand Grenades Theatre Company.

Margo MacDonald - Performer

Margo is a four-time winner of the Prix Rideau Award for Outstanding Performance, as well as the Capital Critics’ Circle Award for Best Actor. Her previous solo show, The Elephant Girls, has been touring nationally and internationally since it premiered in 2015, including runs at Draper Hall in London, England, the Dublin International Gay Theatre Festival in Ireland, and the renowned Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland. To date, the show has won eleven awards. Other recent performance credits include: The Persistent Stain (undercurrents festival). Heartlines, and Albumen (TACTICS Mainstage); A Christmas Carol (Soup Can Theatre); Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), and Fly Me to the Moon, (Great Canadian Theatre Company - GCTC); Henry V, and Much Ado About Nothing (A Company of Fools); and The Penelopiad (Citadel Theatre).