Rebel Daughter

An ensemble piece about one of Canada’s foremost feminists, Doris Anderson: journalist, women’s rights activist and editor of “Chatelaine” in the 50s and 60s. During that time she revolutionized the magazine’s content, throwing grenades like articles on rape, abortion, divorce and sex into its traditionally wholesome and housewife-friendly editorial pages. She is also well-known for her fight for the inclusion of sexual equality into Canada’s Charter of Rights. “Rebel Daughter” was originally developed from the autobiography by Doris Anderson, by Theatre Erindale under the direction of Heinar Piller, at the University of Toronto and Sheridan College joint Theatre and Drama Studies Program in November 2013. It is now being reinvented by our third-year students in their final production before graduating. An examination of Anderson’s life, particularly in light of recent events, invites us to reflect upon, and reinvest in women’s issues today.

The Hands of its Enemy

An obstinate theatre writer begins rehearsals of her new play, with a hotheaded director who did not take the time to read the script. In this work, author Mark Medoff, renowned for the award-winning play and film “Children of a Lesser God”, sheds light on the unique nature of the collaborative process as it transpires at a university resident theatre. Pressure mounts to get the show ready for its Opening, as the characters delve ever more deeply and unsparingly into the meaning of their shared enterprise. They must also, for better or worse, come to confront new truths about themselves. Employing an imaginative, Pirandelloesque play-within-a-play format, this compelling, suspenseful work brings together a group of volatile, creative people under conditions in which the dramatic elements of the play they are rehearsing are soon paralleled in the real lives of the participants.

Unity (1918)

In 1918, a small town in Saskatchewan is blindsided by the Spanish flu just as residents await the return of their men from WWI. Kerr’s play tells a story of loss and courage through the lives of young women clinging to hope despite the virus invading the fabric of their lives – a horror more deadly than the war itself. The charming townsfolk are driven to embrace life and fling themselves into their passions, tempering their grief with grit and faith. An intensely human and darkly comic saga that provides a glimpse into a forgotten moment in Canadian history.

August: Osage County

In a large three-story home outside Pawhuska, Oklahoma, in the thick of August heat, a family is caught in a complex web of dysfunctionality. This is the densely plotted saga of the Weston clan, who, with caustic wit, intense loyalty and savage betrayals, confront their personal demons, and each other, through drink, drugs, sexual misbehaviour and twisted entanglements. As three generations delve into the dark secrets of their past, great tenderness is revealed with raw and touching honesty. This fiercely funny black comedy won a Pulitzer in 2008, many Tony Awards on Broadway, and was adapted into an award-winning film starring Meryl Streep

Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing is undoubtedly one of Shakespeare’s best comedies, featuring the sparring Benedick and Beatrice as they engage in a robust battle of the sexes. These two disputatious lovers are joined by Claudio and Hero, whose misunderstandings take on a much more ominous tone as questions of honour and fidelity arise through deception, gossip and rumour. Meanwhile, Constable Dogberry delights with his mastery of malapropisms, and mistaken identities add to the twists in the plot. An exuberant play that sparkles and delights.

Ubu

In 1896, young Alfred Jarry’s brutal comedy Ubu Roi opened and closed the same night, spurring riots in the streets of Paris; this ridiculous play—about a king and queen who slaughter everyone and get away with it—overwhelmed the audience. For the few years left in his drug-and-booze-addled life, Jarry became obsessed with Père Ubu, writing several more works about the violent, boorish, ineffably stupid and gluttonous king, and his murderous wife.

More than a century later, in this new adaptation of all three Ubu plays, Jarry’s vicious creation not only holds up—it is appallingly current.

Friends

Friends is a dark comedy by absurdist Japanese playwright Kobo Abe, known for his modern sensibilities and existentialist surrealism. This tense drama touches upon the struggles of an individual to maintain his integrity and sense of identity despite a nightmarish intrusion upon his life. A family enters the apartment of a young man. Without invitation or introduction, they announce they have come to save him from his loneliness by living with him and being his friends. Shocked by this strange invasion, he tries to persuade them to leave, but reason proves useless against their cheerful madness. Under the relentless pressure of seemingly “neighbourly love”, the man strives to escape this preposterous house arrest.