Ottawa Little Theatre brings us a few new fall selections, starting with Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee. This famous play tells the story of the Scopes Monkey Trial. The theatre then moves on to the dark thriller Dr. Cook’s Garden by famed writer Ira Levin, from October 18 to November 5. Their fall lineup concludes with the comedy I Hate Hamlet, from November 29 to December 17.
As director and actor David Bernstein describes it, Tim Crouch’s England is a play that exists on the border of theatre and the conscious exploration of what theatre is. It doesn’t enforce the idea of performance, but rather strips it away as much as possible. In between telling a very classical story, the script challenges our conception of “a show.”
As she tells it, Laurie Steven was sitting in Nate’s Deli 25 years ago this year when she decided to start a theatre company. Fresh from Toronto, the trained director was living through a round of “fairly massive budget cuts across the country.” With everything around her being slashed and burnt, Steven realized, “If I wanted to work in theatre, I’d have to found a company.”
The summer theatre season in the city looks to be varied and lush. The first thing on your summer plate is This Is What Happens Next, a show from the marvellous, mercurial performer and writer Daniel MacIvor – an honest-to-goodness star in the world of Canadian drama. It’s at the GCTC now until June 12.
Daniel MacIvor is one of Canada’s most respected theatrical artists. Widely renowned as both a writer and performer, he built his early career on stunning, engrossing one-man plays before leaving the genre to take up different challenges. This Is What Happens Next will be his return to the one-man-show format after years of sabbatical. When asked why he moved back into this kind of writing and performing, MacIvor readily admitted that it’s simply where his life led him. “I didn’t have a choice,” he said.
“We’ve known each other a long time; we’ve killed roaches together in a rented apartment in Toronto years ago” is how actor Graham Ashmore describes his 20-year friendship with his co-star Arne MacPherson. The kind of chemistry that a pair builds up over that length of time is something “you can’t define, but an audience really picks up on it.” MacPherson agreed easily, noting, “If the people watching believe in the friendship, then they have a stake in the process.”