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Tarragon Theatre presents Abyss by Maria Milisavljevic

Tarragon Theatre presents Abyss by Maria Milisavljevic

Get VIZ of poetic thriller about a missing woman and Europe’s underground

WHAT:
Karla Richter, 24, a loving and trusting young woman goes missing. The police and papers ignore the disappearance, leaving her three friends – whose roots lie in Serbia and Croatia – to discover the truth. A search for Karla becomes a search for the self in this lyrical thriller and modern day epic cloaked in the mystery of Europe’s underworld.

WHO:
Maria Milisavljevic, born in Arnsberg, Germany, is an award-winning playwright, theatre creator and director and is Tarragon’s International Playwright-in-Residence. Her latest play Brandung (Abyss) received the 2013 Kleist Promotional Award for Young Dramatists and opened at Deutsches Theater Berlin and continues to run in rep there. Brandung was further named one of the five best new plays of 2013 by Spiegel Magazine.

Richard Rose is the Artistic Director of Tarragon Theatre. Rose is well known for developing new work, including four plays that won the Governor General’s Award and nine other nominated plays. He is a four-time Dora Award winner for direction and production and has had numerous nominations. He has also been honoured with the Canada Council Walter Carsen Award for Excellence in the Arts and the City of Toronto’s Barbara Hamilton Award for the same.

Abyss’s cast:

Gord Rand – Shaw Festival’s The Philanderer, The Cherry Orchard and more; Necessary Angel’s Hamlet; Mirvish’s The Innocent Eye Test (Dora Award), Volcano’s Goodness, which he made into the feature documentary Goodness in Rwanda which won the Audience Choice Award at the 2013 ReelWorld Film Festival and Best Feature Documentary at the Thin Line Film Festival in Denton, Texas.

Sarah Sherman – Canadian Stage’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Theatre By The Bay’s Twelfth Night; That Choir Unplugged member.

Cara Pifko – Tarragon’s Léo; O Rejane for Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles; Soulpepper’s Top Girls; CBC TV drama This is Wonderland, which garnered her a Gemini Award for best actress; Stratford Festival – Coriolanus, Much Ado About Nothing; Canadian Stage – The Clean House; 2013 Best Actress in a Feature Film award from the FilmOut San Diego for her performance in Margarita.

LISTING INFO
Tarragon Theatre presents the English language premiere of
Abyss
Written and translated by Maria Milisavljevic
Directed by Richard Rose
Starring Cara Pifko, Gord Rand, Sarah Sherman
Set and Lighting Design by Jason Hand
Sound Design by Thomas Ryder Payne

Opens February 11 and runs to March 15, 2015 (previews from February 3)
Tarragon Theatre’s Extraspace, 30 Bridgman Avenue, Toronto, M5R 1X3
Tuesday-Saturday at 8pm; Sunday at 2:30pm and select Saturdays at 2:30pm: Feb.14, Feb. 21, Feb. 28.
Regular Tickets: $42-$55; Previews: $27 (Discounts for seniors, students, arts workers and groups)

Rush Tickets: For every performance excluding opening night, specially priced $15 Rush Tickets will be sold (subject to availability) in person at the Box Office two hours before show time.

Tickets can be purchased through Patron Services at 416.531.1827 or by visiting www.tarragontheatre.com

Follow Tarragon on Twitter @TarragonTheatre for updates on rush ticket availability and special ticket offers

Tarragon Theatre Toronto “Waiting Room”

Tarragon Theatre Toronto “Waiting Room”

Tarragon Theatre presents the world premiere of
Waiting Room
by Diane Flacks
Directed by Richard Greenblatt
Starring Ari Cohen, Michelle Monteith, Jordan Pettle, Warona Setshwaelo, Jane Spidell, Jenny Young

Photo Cylla-von-Tiedemann

Tarragon Theatre proudly presents the world premiere of Waiting Room, written by the talented and multi-faceted Diane Flacks, and directed by the equally talented, multi-faceted Richard Greenblatt, teaming up for a second time as writer and director for Tarragon. This powerful new drama about diagnosis, prognosis and uncertainty opens January 14, 2015 and runs to February 15 (previews from January 6) in Tarragon’s Mainspace. Six outstanding actors – Ari Cohen, Michelle Monteith, Jordan Pettle, Warona Setshwaelo, Jane Spidell, Jenny Young – are featured in this penetrating work.

What are you willing to risk to save a life? A doctor embarks on a ground-breaking medical experiment despite the objections of his colleagues. Meanwhile, a couple are torn about whether the doctor has what it takes to save their baby. This is a play about life in the waiting room of a major children’s hospital. This is a play about medical compassion and risk. This is a play about families who find the will to keep going. This is a play about the needs of the heart and the extremes of medicine. This is a play about breaking the rules. This is a play about hope.

“Hope is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words
– And never stops – At all.” -Emily Dickinson
Says Flacks, “Waiting Room began percolating as an idea almost seven years ago as I sat in a coccyx-crushing rocking chair in a Neo-natal Intensive Care Unit with my baby son. During our nine-month sojourn there, and in the years to come, I could not have imagined the suffering I would witness or the deep humanity I’d encounter both from the medical staff and other parents. They became our world and our family. While inspired by my personal situation, Waiting Room is not my story – it has elements of my story as well as the stories of dozens of people I met and interviewed. It speaks to tricky, often insoluble questions of humanity that both patients and doctors confront when they find themselves on the precipice of life and death, and contemplate whether they should risk, or refrain.”
LISTING INFO:
Tarragon Theatre presents the world premiere of
Waiting Room
by Diane Flacks
Directed by Richard Greenblatt
Starring Ari Cohen, Michelle Monteith, Jordan Pettle, Warona Setshwaelo, Jane Spidell, Jenny Young
Set and Costume Design by Kelly Wolf
Lighting Design by Bonnie Beecher
Sound Design by Reza Jacobs
Video Design by Cameron Davis

Opens January 14 and runs to February 15, 2014 (previews from January 6)
Tarragon Theatre’s Mainspace, 30 Bridgman Avenue, Toronto, M5R 1X3
Tuesday-Saturday at 8pm; Sunday at 2:30pm and select Saturdays at 2:30pm: Jan.17, Jan.24, Jan.31
Tickets can be purchased through Patron Services at 416.531.1827 or by visiting www.tarragontheatre.com
Regular Tickets: $42-$55 (Previews: $23-$27)
Rush Tickets: For every performance excluding opening night, specially priced $15 Rush Tickets will be sold (subject to availability) in person at the Box Office two hours before show time. Follow us on Twitter @TarragonTheatre for regular updates on rush ticket availability and special ticket offers.

Theatre: A Slight Ache, 2012 Toronto Fringe Festival

Theatre: A Slight Ache, 2012 Toronto Fringe Festival

 

Past Reviews From 2012

Red Rabbit Theatre Productions presents Harold Pinter’s early masterpiece, A Slight Ache (1958), at the 2012 Toronto Fringe Festival. The play is typically Pinteresque: two people in a room are suddenly interrupted as a third person enters, thus intruding upon the habitual recurrence of their internal environment.

A Slight Ache can be classified as a Comedy of Menace, a pun on the Victorian-era Comedy of Manners, which is defined as a comic work that satirizes social interaction. The play employs comic elements in its criticism of the fundamental actions of Modern society, however there exists an air of violence that produces an effect of uncertainty. A Slight Ache opens with Edward (Jason Thompson) and Flora (Angela Froese) in their country house, a sphere familiar to them, however the presence of the Matchseller (Christopher Kelk) selling his wares outside of their back gate disrupts their comfortable solitude. Thus, the external world becomes menacing as it vaguely threatens to displace the conventional atmosphere of routine existence. It too becomes evident that Edward and Flora, though long married, are incapable of understanding one another. From their banal observations on the flowers blossoming in their garden emerges an ambiguity between words spoken and the portentous silences that follow, which create a depth of meaning and reveal an unsettling quality.

The Matchseller remains quiescent throughout the entire play, unable or unwilling to answer commonplace questions regarding his identity. This lack of action serves as a catalyst for Edward’s eventual breakdown; furthermore the Matchseller’s silence becomes one that bears both hostile and symbolic implications and is perceived as the intent to conceal meaning. In comparison, the tedious exchange between Edward and Flora was in itself meaningless yet potent, and Pinter suggests that such conversations are an act of evasion, an attempt to veil the emptiness within the self and society as a whole.
Under the direction of Mark Schoenberg, Pinter’s depiction of the crisis of Modernity and his visionary stylistic theatricality are accomplished with thoughtfulness and subtle ambiguity. In the darkened seats of Tarragon Main, I thought of how this playwright was not only able to perform the menial task of depicting daily experience as it occurs, but that he possessed the forethought to be capable of discerning the ethereal possibilities of the postmodern condition. With this sentiment, dear reader, I propose that, should you have the fortuity to attend a performance of any of Pinter’s works, you should immerse yourself in the deviant world of the uncanny.

Canadian Rep Theatre Toronto How Do I Love Thee

Canadian Rep Theatre Toronto How Do I Love Thee

In February, 2015, Canadian Rep Theatre presents the Toronto premiere of Florence Gibson MacDonald’s How Do I Love Thee?, directed by Ken Gass, at Berkeley Street Upstairs Theatre. Penned by the author of the award-winning Belle and Home is My Road, How Do I Love Thee? is a language-rich exploration of both the euphoric and darker sides of the  marriage of Elizabeth Barrett (Browning) and Robert Browning, poets who enjoyed ‘rock star status’ at the heights of their careers. The production will preview January 31 – February 4, open February 5 and run until February 22. The production features a stellar cast with Irene Poole as Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Matthew Edison as Robert Browning, Nora McLellan as Wilson and Richard McMillan as John Kenyon.

Calendar of this theater event

HOW DO I LOVE THEE? by Florence Gibson MacDonald – Berkeley Street Theatre Upstairs
Previews January 31 – February 4, opens February 5 and runs to February 22

 

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