Tarragon Theatre Toronto's Free Play Reading Week November 20-25 2012

From a media release:

TARRAGON THEATRE presents
Play Reading Week
November 20-25, 2012

TORONTO -
Tarragon Theatre is proud to present Play Reading Week 2012. This annual celebration of plays-in-development by the talented playwrights associated with the theatre runs November 20 to 25 in Tarragon's Near Studio. Andrea Donaldson, Tarragon's Assistant Artistic Director, directs all of the readings.

The latest works from Tarragon's 2012 Playwrights Unit are presented alongside new works by playwright-in-residence Rosa Laborde, RBC Tarragon Emerging Playwrights' Competition winner (2010/2011) Tracey Power and the English premiere of the latest work by French-Canadian playwright Marcel-Romain Thériault.

Admission is free and no reservations are taken. For more information, call the Tarragon Theatre box office at 416-531-1827 or visit www.tarragontheatre.com

Play Reading Week 2012 includes:
o Late Company by Jordan Tannahill
o Like Wolves by Rosa Laborde
o The Benefit by Matthew MacKenzie
o Ordinary Genius by Tracey Power
o Skin to Skin adapted by Ines Buchli, from an original screenplay by Ines Buchli and Marlene Rodgers
o Sands by Marcel-Romain Thériault, translated by Jo-Anne Elder

Program Details:

Tuesday, November 20, 2012 at 8:00pm
Late Company by Jordan Tannahill

A couple reaches out to their deceased son's tormenter and parents, inviting them to dinner. But far from finding the closure they seek, the evening strips bare their good intentions to reveal layers of parental, sexual, and political hypocrisy.

Jordan Tannahill is a playwright, theatre director and filmmaker. He was recently nominated for the Ingmar Bergman Prize and, in 2011, received Inside Out Film Festival's Emerging Canadian Artist Award and the Ken McDougall Award for emerging directors.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012 at 8:00pm
Like Wolves by Rosa Laborde

Sam takes Vera on a trip for their fifty-fourth wedding anniversary. Nothing turns out as planned in this play about life, death and the many miscommunications in between.

Rosa Laborde is a Toronto-based playwright and actress. She has been a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award and received the 2012 KM Hunter Artist's Award for Theatre. Laborde is a playwright-in-residence at Tarragon Theatre, Great Canadian Theatre Company and Aluna Theatre.

Thursday, November 22, 2012 at 8:00pm
The Benefit by Matthew MacKenzie

If philanthropy is the gateway to power, then Banff's "Castle in the Rockies" is a philanthropic epicentre. At a ball to raise funds for girls' education in the developing world, a leading Albertan charitable foundation is rocked by revelations that threaten to throw thousands of girls out of school.

Matthew MacKenzie is a graduate of the Playwriting Program at the National Theatre School of Canada where he was the winner of the Lieutenant Governor's Award for excellence and community involvement. His play SIA won the 2010 Alberta Playwriting Competition's Grand Prize Category.

Friday, November 23, 2012 at 8:00pm
Ordinary Genius by Tracey Power

After her mother's sudden death, documentary filmmaker Mack Fleming spends her waking hours poring over her mother's medical journals. When she discovers a copy of a letter from Canadian physician and professor Dr. William Osler to his patient Walt Whitman, Mack is determined to uncover what's underneath the doctor's infamous cool demeanor.

Tracey Power is an actor, playwright, director and choreographer. She recently conceived, directed and choreographed Chelsea Hotel, featuring the songs of Leonard Cohen for the Firehall Arts Centre (Vancouver). Her plays include Living Shadows, The Great Mountain, a bilingual comedy Garage Alec, The Big Sneeze and the musical Back To You. She is also currently developing a euro-funk musical called Miss Shakespeare.

Saturday, November 24, 2012 at 8:00pm
Skin to Skin adapted for the stage by Ines Buchli from an original screenplay by Ines Buchli and Marlene Rodgers

How close is too close?  Katrina and Dina are the seemingly independent daughters of Bunny, a flamboyant matriarch who is planning the wedding to end all weddings - for herself. As Bunny draws her daughters into a vortex of preparations, they struggle to finally break free.

Ines Buchli is a writer, director and filmmaker. She has over 25 years of theatre experience in directing, and devised creations. Her films Exposure, Ministry and Keeper screened internationally and her award-winning short Foxy Lady, Wild Cherry premiered at TIFF. Buchli has an MFA from York where she teaches acting and directing.

Sunday, November 25, 2012 at 2:30pm
Sands by Marcel-Romain Thériault, translated by Jo-Anne Elder

Joel returns home after twenty years to make peace with his dying mother, Mérilda. In the early 1980s, Joel and Mérilda fought unsuccessfully against the expropriation of Acadian land to create New Brunswick's Kouchibouguac National Park. Can he reconcile with a mother who blames him for abandoning the cause and his home?

Originally from New Brunswick, Marcel Romain Thériault is a Montreal-based playwright, actor and director.  Sands (La persistance du sable) was shortlisted for the France-Acadie Literary Award and nominated for the Émile-Ollivier Literary Award (Conseil supérieur de la langue française de Quebec) and the Antonine-Maillet-Acadie Vie Literary Award.  

Jo-Anne Elder has translated twenty works of poetry, theatre, film, fiction and non-fiction, including Beatitudes, (by Herménégilde Chiasson), and One (by Serge Patrice Thibodeau), both of which were finalists for the Governor General's prize.

Image:
Marlane O’Brien, Jim Warren, Bruce McFee, Brooke Johnson
in Toronto, Mississippi (1987)
by Joan MacLeod
photo: Michael Coope

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