Factory Theatre Announces 2007/08 Season
Factory Theatre launches its bold new 38th
season with a full slate of works, including five large productions in the
Mainspace Theatre; one Studio Theatre production; and the return of two major
festivals: CrossCurrents, and Performance Spring. The playbill includes provocative and
scintillating works by veteran playwrights, Linda Griffiths (Age of Arousal),
Andrew Moodie (The Real McCoy) and
George F. Walker (Beyond Mozambique) as
well as a powerful double bill by the strongly emerging new voice, Hannah Moscovitch (The Russian Play & Essay). Factory’s 2007/2008 season also boasts compelling collaborations
with some of Canada’s most innovative and boundary pushing independent theatres
including: Theatre-Smith Gilmour (The Mansfield Project), Nightwood
Theatre (Griffiths’ Age of Arousal) and Vancouver’s
award-winning collective, Theatre Replacement (Sexual Practices of the Japanese).
Artistic Director Ken Gass states, “Once again Factory has put forward a
program that champions strong Canadian playwriting, theatrical innovation and
cultural diversity. I’m also
particularly proud of the generational mix this season represents, with a number
of talented young writers and directors strongly featured in our Mainspace. Our
ability to do this is also a result of the significant financial gains we made
in last year’s successful season under Managing Director Colleen Smith’s
stewardship.”
THE REAL
MCCOY
Written
and directed by Andrew Moodie
A joint
production of Factory Theatre with The Great Canadian Theatre Company
Starring
Maurice Dean Wint, Ardon Bess, Kevin Hanchard, Marcia Johnson, Bruce Beaton,
Matthew Deslippe & Ordena Stephens-Thompson. October/November.
Following the huge success of its Factory
premiere in 2006, Andrew Moodie’s powerful play, The Real McCoy, returns
to our Mainspace to open the fall season.
This special three-week encore presentation is a joint production of
Factory Theatre with Ottawa’s Great Canadian Theatre Company where the
production will subsequently run for four weeks. Inspired by the life of Elijah McCoy, The Real McCoy tells the
tale of the renowned Black engineer born in Canada to runaway slaves, who later
became a leading expert in the field of thermo-dynamics and whose inventions
revolutionized steam engine travel. With a triumphant career that included an
amazing 57 patents, ‘The Real McCoy’ became an expression of authenticity
despite being inspired by a man whose life was marred by tragedy.
AGE OF AROUSAL
By Linda
Griffiths. Directed by Maja Ardal
Produced by Nightwood Theatre in Association
with Factory Theatre
Starring
Clare Coulter, Sarah Dodd, Maggie
Huculak, Ellen-Ray Henessey, Gemma James-Smith & Dylan Smith. Set &
Costume Design by Julia Tribe. Lighting Design by Kimberly Purtell. November/December.
Genre-busting, rule-bending, and ambitiously
original, award-winning playwright Linda Griffiths’ Age of Arousal has its
Toronto premiere at Factory Theatre. Age of Arousal is a lavish, sexy ensemble piece about the
forbidden and gloriously liberated self. The setting is 1885, a time of passion
and confusion. A population imbalance leaves London flooded with half a million
more women than men and an escalating suffrage movement has ushered in a
rip-roaring new age. When Mary
Barfoot’s school for secretaries is invaded by three spinster sisters and a
charismatic cad named Everard, her beloved Rhoda is swept up in a web of
craving and chaos that leaves none of the characters untouched.
THE
RUSSIAN PLAY/ESSAY - Two Plays by Hannah Moscovitch Directed by Natasha Mytnowych (The Russian Play) and Michael Rubenfield
(Essay)
Produced by Factory Theatre. January/February.
Set in Russia in the 1920s, Hannah
Moscovitch’s The Russian Play revolves around the heart-wrenching story of
Sonya, a teenage flower-shop girl who falls in love with a married gravedigger.
Winner of the SummerWorks Jury Prize for Outstanding Production, and fresh from
sold out performances at the Magnetic North Theatre Festival in Ottawa, The
Russian Play speaks of love and death and the
plight of women in a time of radically shifting social and political paradigms
-- a bleak, bittersweet and darkly ironic ode to the dangerous joys of
love. Switch to the present day: in Essay, the critically acclaimed hit
from the 2005 SummerWorks festival, Hannah Moscovitch blows the classroom doors
wide open to expose the seedy underbelly of academic and gender politics. A
first-year student writing a controversial essay on an obscure female
historical figure is drawn into a cat-and-mouse debate with her patronizing
professor and the manipulative history department head. Idealism and ethics are laid to waste in
this intellectual battlefield that takes us right through the glass ceiling.
BEYOND
MOZAMBIQUE
By
George F. Walker. Directed by Ken Gass
Produced by Factory Theatre. March/April.
Far from the familiar Toronto world of last
season’s hugely successful East End plays, Beyond Mozambique presents a bold new production of an
early George F. Walker masterpiece, last seen at Factory in 1978. In a remote jungle far from the reaches of
‘civilization’, five haunted individuals try desperately to escape their past:
a disgraced Canadian Mountie, a drug-addicted priest from the Orient, an
ex-porn Queen from New York, an Italian Nazi Doctor, and his wife, Olga, who
believes she is her namesake from Chekhov’s Three Sisters. All are seeking redemption, or at least a
second chance, but a local uprising is about to break loose, threatening even
this long-lost refuge in the bowels of the universe. No one but George F. Walker could explore the darker side of
humanity with such a hilarious mixture of pathos, theatricality and unbridled wit.
PERFORMANCE
SPRING
The Sexual Practices of the Japanese (see below) headlines
Factory’s second annual Performance Spring Festival in
May. At least two other productions and
various special events featured within Performance Spring will be announced
at a later date.
THE
SEXUAL PRACTICES OF THE JAPANESE
By Maiko Bae Yamamoto, James Long, Manami Hara & Hiro Kanagawa
Directed by Maiko Bae Yamamoto and James Long
A Theatre Replacement Production Presented by
Factory Theatre. May.
Theatre Replacement, one of Vancouver’s most
consistently innovative and critically acclaimed theatres, comes to the Factory
with the Toronto premiere of The Sexual Practices of the Japanese. In a scintillating peek at the world
of sexual stereotypes surrounding Japanese culture, Theatre Replacement’s trilogy
of interweaving stories moves from a
crowded commuter train to one of Tokyo’s infamous love hotels. A standout success at Ottawa’s Magnetic
North Festival and Seattle’s On The Boards Behnke Center For Contemporary
Performance, this wittily irreverent must-see show touches on office politics,
work parties and Seattle Mariners’ star out-fielder (and Japanese icon) Ichiro
Suzuki.
THE MANSFIELD PROJECT
Created by Dean Gilmour and Michelle
Smith with the Company. Directed by Dean Gilmour and Michelle Smith.
Produced by Theatre Smith-Gilmour in association with
Factory Theatre. Starring Dean Gilmour, Michelle Smith, Claire Calnan and Adam Paolozza.
March/April.
After a celebrated seven-year exploration into
the world of Anton Chekhov, Theatre Smith-Gilmour returns with
the world premiere of The Mansfield Project. A contemporary of D. H. Lawrence, Katherine
Mansfield was considered one of the best short story writers of her period and
was the only writer Virginia Woolf admitted to ever being jealous of. Presented in Smith-Gilmour’s inimitable,
visually arresting style, The Mansfield Project is an exquisite and beautifully moving
adaptation of four of Katherine Mansfield’s short stories, works that are
fragile and beautiful, yet sometimes cruel and cynical in their depiction of
the dance of life and death.
CROSSCURRENTS FESTIVAL
Now in its 7th glorious year,
CrossCurrents, dedicated to playwrights of colour and the only festival
of its kind, will once again be produced by Factory Artistic Associate, Nina
Lee Aquino. CrossCurrents is both a
celebration of the great diversity emanating on the national scene and a focus
for the development of new plays that explore the intersection of cultures. The
playwrights are new, fresh and vital as are the dozens of talented artists who
contribute to CrossCurrents each year. Once again, expect this exciting
10-day festival to charge ahead full throttle to reveal fascinating glimpses of
the future of Canadian Theatre. May
2 – 11, 2008.
TRANSCANADA
READING WEEK
As
part of its play development program this year, Factory has launched a major
national initiative to present a reading series of new plays from across
Canada. TransCanada Reading Week is
a unique collaboration between Factory Theatre and play development centres in
B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec and the Maritimes to choose
several of the most exciting new works from their development programs, bringing
the playwrights to Toronto for a festival of play readings in the Factory
Studio Theatre. Stay tuned for more details about this ambitious new national
event, scheduled for October 1 to 6, 2007.
Season
Schedule:
The Real
McCoy
Written by Andrew Moodie
Produced by Factory Theatre
Directed by Andrew Moodie
Previews Oct 11 & 12, Opens Oct 13
Runs Oct 11 – Nov 4,
Factory Mainspace
Age of
Arousal
Written by Linda Griffiths
Produced by Nightwood Theatre in Association
with Factory Theatre
Previews Nov 17 – 22, Opens Nov 23
Runs Nov 17 – Dec 16
Factory Mainspace
The
Russian Play/ Essay – Two Plays by Hannah Moscovitch
Directed by Natasha Mytnowych and Michael
Rubenfield
Produced by Factory Theatre
Previews Jan 19 – 23, Opens Jan 24
Runs Jan 19 – Feb 17, 2008
Factory Mainspace
The Mansfield Project
Created by Dean Gilmour & Michelle Smith
with the Company
Produced by Theatre Smith-Gilmour
in Association with Factory Theatre
Previews March 15 - 16, Opens Mar 18
Runs March 15 – April 13, 2008
Factory Studio Theatre
Beyond
Mozambique
Written by George F. Walker
Directed by Ken Gass
Produced by Factory Theatre
Previews Mar 29 – April 2, Opens April 3
Runs Mar 29 – April 27, 2008
Factory Mainspace
7th
Annual CrossCurrents Festival
Nina Lee Aquino, Producer
Runs May 2 – May 11, 2008