Season Announcement: Nightwood Theatre
iPhoto caption: Photo by John Lauener
Nightwood Theatre has announced its 2019-2020 season!
For their 40th anniversary, Artistic Director Kelly Thornton and Managing Director Beth Brown have announced a season of shows that centralize politics, privilege, power, and progress.
“Our 40th season is an array of work that grapples with our collective history, cautions us on the precarity of our present, and calls us to action for our future,” says Thornton.
This announcement marks Thornton’s last as artistic director after 18 years with the company. “This season is a salute to our roots while putting a distinct focus on our future,” she says. “The theatre of our foremothers was rooted in collective creation as well as challenging the status quo. Shared authorship is a common thread this year, as is work that experiments with form and pushes in content.”
Following the theme of shared authorship, Nightwood’s upcoming season boasts three world premieres created in collaboration with Common Boots Theatre, Aluna Theatre, and Nightwood’s own Write from the Hip program. This season also includes the Toronto premiere of Governor-General Award-nominated playwright, Karen Hines’ All The Little Animals I’ve Eaten, in collaboration with Crow’s Theatre.
To read more about the works featured in Nightwood’s 2019-2020 season, read below.
NIGHTWOOD THEATRE’s 2019-2020 Season
The Election
By Yolanda Bonnell & Natasha Greenblatt with Jennifer Brewin, Qasim Khan, Anand Rajaram, and Courtenay Steven
A Common Boots Theatre Production in association with Nightwood Theatre and Theatre Direct
October 4 – 27, 2019 at Theatre Passe Muraille (16 Ryerson Ave.)
Director: Jennifer Brewin
In 2015, a group of artists from Ojibwe, Jewish, Polish, Tamil and Pakistani backgrounds, identifying as straight, queer and bi-sexual, infiltrated local elections as volunteers for three major political parties and documented their experiences. Incorporating kaleidoscopic political views as well as questions of Indigenous sovereignty, The Election promises to spark an urgent dialogue just as Canadians are about to take another swing at the ballot box.
Presented by Theatre Passe Muraille with the support of Studio 180 Theatre’s IN DEVELOPMENT program.
Every Day She Rose
By Andrea Scott and Nick Green
November 23 – December 8, 2019 at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (12 Alexander St.)
Directors: Andrea Donaldson and Sedina Fiati
The personal becomes political in this collaboratively created new work from playwrights Andrea Scott and Nick Green. When racial and queer politics collide at the 2016 Toronto Pride parade, two best friends discover that the things that brought them together may now drive them apart. A hilarious and heartbreaking stare-down of privilege and oppression.
The Solitudes
Created by Beatriz Pizano with Lara Arabian, Brefny Caribou, Liliana Suarez Henao, Janis Mayers, Rosalba Martinni, Michelle Polak, Sofia Rodriguez, Rhoma Spencer, and Asha Vijayasingha
An Aluna Theatre Production in association with Nightwood Theatre
January 7 – 26, 2020 at Harbourfront Centre Theatre (231 Queens Quay W.)
Nine women: each is tied through distinct mythologies and life experiences to a Story, a Truth. None of their stories match. Yet they all remain true. Drawing from historical and personal documentation, these figures embody a mythological world where past, present and future exist all at once. Inspired by the women of Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, they unearth and reclaim space for the keeping of memory.
All The Little Animals I Have Eaten
By Karen Hines
A Nightwood Theatre Production in association with Crow’s Theatre
March 24 – April 12, 2020 at Streetcar Crowsnest (345 Carlaw Ave.)
Director: Karen Hines
In the latest of Karen Hines’ darkly hilarious comedies, we follow a tender-hearted young server on the most harrowing shift of her life. In the extraordinarily modern bistro of an all-women’s condo, our heroine contends with voracious insurance adjustors, literary plagiarists, and indomitable invertebrates. Table talk ranges from real estate to politics to the existential transcendence of lambs – but it’s only when the fuzzy ones start to speak that our hero really starts to listen. Governor General nominated, powerhouse playwright of The Pochsy Plays and Crawlspace, Hines serves up a biting meditation on neo-liberalism, consumption, precarity, and hope.
The Groundswell Festival
Readings from the 2018/19 Write from the Hip Playwrights program
September 24 – 29, 2019 at Dancemakers Theatre, The Distillery District
Don’t miss this week of new Canadian plays from some of the most exciting emerging female-identifying playwrights in the city. The 2018/19 Write from the Hip playwrights are Katherine Gauthier, Anyika Mark, Tabia Lau, Catt Filippov, and Lara Arabian.
Dylan Coutts
Dylan is a journalism student at the University of King's College, Halifax. His internship at Intermission is the only thing that stands between him and his degree. Dylan has a passion for (and a BA in) theatre history and is an Aquarius, with a Leo moon, and a Scorpio rising.
LEARN MORE
iPhoto caption: Poster art by Jesús Rivera Zavala.
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iPhoto caption: Courtesy of the St. Michael's College Troubadours.
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