PUENTE THEATRE

WORLDPLAY 2017

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April 23rd:  Tom at the Farm by Michel Marc Bouchard  (Quebec) 

                                                          Translated by Linda Gaboriau

                                                          Directed by Sean Guist

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Tom at the Farm

 

Following the accidental death of his lover, and in the throes of his grief, urban ad executive Tom travels to the country to attend the funeral and to meet his mother-in-law, Agatha, and her son, Francis - neither of whom know Tom even exists. Arriving at the remote rural farm, and immediately drawn into the dysfunction of the family'srelationships, Tom is blindsided by his lost partner's legacy of deceit. The lover - the friend, the son, the brother, the nameless dead man - has left behind a fable woven of false-truths which, according to his own teenage diaries, were essential to his survival. In this same rural setting, one young man had once destroyed another young man who loved yet another. Like an ancient tragedy, years later, this drama will shape the destiny of Tom.

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"Funny, harsh, tender and terrible." - Sun (Montréal)
"Extremely well written, a work of great density." -CBC

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Quebec playwright Michel Marc Bouchard emerged on the professional theatre scene in 1985.   Since then he has written twenty-five plays and has been the recipient of numerous awards, including, in June 2012, the prestigious National Order of Quebec for his contribution to Quebec culture, and in 2005, the Order of Canada. He has also received the Le Prix Littéraire du Journal de Montréal, Priz du Circles des Critiques de l'Outaouais, the Governor General's Performing Arts Award, the Dora Major Moore Award, and the Chalmers Award for outstanding New Play. Translated into nine languages, Bouchard's bold, visionary works have represented Canada at major festivals around the world. 

Bouchard's play Les Feluettes (Lilies) has been turned into an opera, co-commissioned by Opera de Montreal and Pacific Opera Victoria, with the libretto by Bouchard. POV's production of Les Feluettes is playing at The Royal Theatre April 20, 22, 28 & 30th.

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Linda Gaboriau is an award-winning literary translator based in Montréal. Her translations of Plays by Quebec's most prominent playwrights have been published and produced across Canada and abroad. In her work as a literary manager and dramaturge, she has directed numerous translation residencies and international exchange projects. She was the founding director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre. Gaboriau has twice won the Governor General's Award for Translation: in 1996 for Daniel Danis' Stone and Ashes, and in 2010, for Wajdi Mouawad's Forests.

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Sean Guist

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Arts Administrator by day and queer artist, producer and director by night, Sean curates Intrepid Theatre's new queer theatre festival, OUTstages, launched in July 2015. He holds his MFA (2012) in Directing and BFA in Performance from the University of Lethbridge, and has facilitated classes and workshops in movement, physical theatre and scene study. Sean has acted, directed, designed, produced, and performed in shows and cabarets on the Fringe circuit, independently, and as a freelance artist. Recent credits include: directing Side by Side by Sondheim (Saltwater Inc, Victoria), Down Dangerous Passes Road (Independent, Victoria), Menotti's one-act opera The Telephone (Lethbridge), and Michel Marc Bouchard's The Madonna Painter (thesis project, Lethbridge); producing (and performing in) the annual cabaret Pretty, Witty and GAY! (2007-2009) and Homo for the Holidays, a holiday spectacular fundraiser for Intrepid Theatre in 2013, 2014, 2015 & 2016. Sean is the Marketing & Development Manager | OUTstages Curator at Intrepid Theatre and is the Vice President of the Board of Directors for the indie dance company Broken Rhythms. He is thrilled to be a part of Puente Theatre's WorldPlay for the first time, and to direct his third play by Michel Marc Bouchard.

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April 30th:  Halfway House  by Phillip Orr  (Ireland)

                                                          Directed by Julian Cervello

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Halfway House

 

It's early in the year 1966 and two women meet by chance in a snow bound pub in the Sperrin Mountains. They discover that each has a personal connection to the wartime events of fifty years ago in Ireland and abroad. But what is that connection? The Halfway House is midway between the events of 1916 and today, and through the sharp lens of Philip Orr's fine writing, it proves to be a very effective vantage point to examine the past. 

             “Sometimes an old grudge can last longer than a world war.”

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Philip Orr is a Belfast-based writer, playwright, and community worker who has studied the Irish experience of the First World War. In the 1980's he interviewed many of the remaining Irish Veterans. His published works include The Road to the Somme (Belfast 1987) and Field of Bones (Dublin 2006). These books focus on the experience of the ordinary soldier on the Western Front and at Gallipoli. They also explore the mythological uses of the war in post-imperial Ireland. 

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Julian Cervello is a local actor at the beginning of his directing career. He is the artistic director of Scrumpy Theatre which has produced three plays by Geoffrey Chaucer, entirely in Middle English: Canterbury Cocktails, The Wyf of Bathe*, The Friar versus the Summoner, also Two Person Othello, Hanna Moscovitch’s Essay*, a staged reading of Eugene O Neill’s domestic tragedy, A Long Day’s Journey into Night*, and Boiler Room Suite. Selected acting credits include Lieutenant Nun (Puente & SNAFU), War of the Eagles (Kaleidoscope), The Crackwalker, Pornography, In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play (Inconnu), Macbeth (Tempest), Joyful Noise (Peanut Butter People), No Such Thing (Blood Orange), Our Town (Soulpepper).

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May 7th:  The Prophet  by Hassan Abdulrazzak  (Iraq)            

                                              Directed by Mercedes Bátiz-Benét

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The Prophet

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It's January 28th 2011 and Egypt stand on the brink.  For Layla and Hisham, a young couple living in downtown Cairo, a dictatorial and corrupt government is only one of their problems. As the world shifts, cataclysmically, around them some long-hidden secrets threaten to emerge and tear them apart. Based on extensive interviews in Cairo with revolutionaries and soldiers, journalists and cab drivers, this new drama depicts both a revolution in progress and the society from which it sprang. 

 

Hassan Abdulrazzak is of Iraqi origin, born in Prague and living in London. He holds a PhD in molecular biology and has worked at Harvard and Imperial College. Hassan’s first play Baghdad Wedding, was staged at Soho Theatre in 2007 to great acclaim. It went on to have productions in Australia and India and was also broadcast on BBC radio 3. Hassan’s play The Prophet was performed at The Gate Theatre in 2012 and was based on extensive interviews in Cairo with revolutionaries and soldiers, journalists and cab drivers. More recently he was commissioned by the Kevin Spacey Foundation to write Dhow Under The Sun, a play for 35 young actors, which was staged in Sharjah, UAE (Jan 2015). He was also commissioned by Untold Theatre to write Catalina, the story of the Moorish slave of Catherine of Aragon (Ovalhouse Theatre 1-4 April 2015). His comic monologue play Love, Bombs and Apples was selected out 114 scripts to be part of the PlayWROUGHT3 festival and was staged at the Arcola Theatre (July 2015) as part of the Shubbak festival. His short play Lost Kingdom was selected out of 75 scripts to be part of San Francisco's Golden Thread ReOrient 2015 festival. His essays have been published in the Guardian, the Edinburgh Review and Al-Ahram Weekly. His poems have been published in Snakeskin and in We Are Iraqis: Aesthetics and Politics in a Time of War edited by Nadje Al-Ali and Deborah Al-Najjar. He is currently working on a number of theatre, TV and film projects.

Mercedes Bátiz-Benét is a multi-disciplinary artist, writer, and award-winner director. She was born and raised in Mexico and in 1997 she moved to Canada. She holds a BFA in Creative Writing in both poetry and drama, and a BA Honours in Philosophy from the University of Victoria, as well as a Diploma in Film Production from the Pacific Film & New Media Academy. Productions of her work include Faust: Ignis Fatuus, at the international festival Faustfest, Shining Through, Lágrimas Crueles, El Jinete ~ A Mariachi Opera, Cruel Tears/Lágrimas Crueles, a Puente and Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre co-production, and as co-writer, The Umbrella, The Secret Sorrow of Hatchet Jack Macphee for The Caravan Farm Theatre, The Erotic Anguish of Don Juan with the Old Trout Puppet Workshop, and Puente Theatre’s Gruff. In 2014, Mercedes won the Canadian Stage Award for Direction at the SummerWorks Festival with her play El Jinete ~ A Mariachi Opera. She is the poetry, fiction, and non-fiction editor at Bayeux Arts, and the artistic director of Puente Theatre.

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May 14th:  Love and Information  by Caryl Churchill (England)

                                                                      Directed by Jo Leslie 

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Love and Information

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Tell me. I want to know. I need to know. I have to know. Oh, I'm sorry you told me. I wish I didn't know that. The impulses behind those sentences have animated every human being who has walked this planet. And the odds are that, in some form or another, those instincts percolate throughout your waking hours every day. It's enough to keep any Homo Sapiens' head in full spin. Especially now, when the distribution and consumption of data have assumed the proportions of a Tower of Babel that seems ready to topple at any moment. Such is the dizzying premise behind Love and Information. 

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Caryl Churchill is a British playwright known for dramatising the abuses of power, for her use of non-naturalistic techniques, and for her exploration of sexual politics and feminist themes. Her early work developed Bertolt Brecht's modernist dramatic and theatrical techniques of Epic Theatre to explore issues of gender and sexuality. From A Mouthful of Birds (1986) onwards, she began to experiment with forms of dance-theatre, incorporating techniques developed from the performance tradition initiated by Antonin Artaud with his 'Theatre of Cruelty'. This move away from a clear Fabel dramaturgy towards increasingly fragmented and surrealistic narratives characterises her work as postmodernist.

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Jo Leslie‘s career spans four decades in theatre, dance and opera. She has contributed to over 140 productions with companies as diverse as The Norlansopperan, Sweden (assistant director and choreographer: The Elephant Man, new opera) The National Arts Centre ( Hamlet, Love Labours’ Lost, A Room of One’s Own, The Vaudevilles of Chekov) Young Peoples’ Theatre (Dora award for choreography) The Stratford Festival (movement director: Taming of the Shrew, The Liar, The Odyssey). Jo was principle movement teacher and coach at the National Theatre School 1990 -2001, and company coach at Stratford. Formerly an established dancer/choreographer she co founded Studio 303 in Montréal and is in demand as a dance director and dramaturge. Jo is now based in Victoria where she was artist in residence with Theatre SKAM (2016) and is making work that bridges theatre and movement. She recently directed Under Milkwood for VADARTS, and wrote her first one woman play In The Belly of the Whale. Jo’s mixed ability duet, Mutable Tongues, with text and dance, premiered at Place des arts, Montréal last year.