2006-2007 Season | Studio 4 | Family 3 | Flexpass
Celebrity Speakers Series | The Ark
The Ark
SATURDAY DECEMBER 9 AT 8 PM - ST. ANDREW'S PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Where this season is concentrated exclusively on contemporary works, we want to
alternate our repertoire with works of the classical theatre and world stage. It's
important that we measure our own ideas and practice by the methods and means of
other times and places. Every play was a new work once, and as we look for replenishment
and rejuvenation of our "national repertoire," what better source of inspiration
than the volatile terrain of the Elizabethan and Jacobean canon? Here are plays about
power and intrigue, madness and revenge. It is also the period of the Jacobean city
comedy, where merchants and their wives contend for "rule, supremacy and sway"
and challenge our notions of what it is to "serve, love and obey." Together they're kind
of like Quentin Tarantino meets Coronation Street. I think it's a sensibility perfectly
suited to our times.
In addition to works by Shakespeare, we will look at his neglected
contemporaries, including the first woman to publish a play in English. We will also look
at a few modern pieces based on a Renaissance theme. Working with a company of actors,
directors, designers, playwrights and dramaturges, we will spend each morning exploring
a social component of this explosive period. Each afternoon we will read a play and
examine it under the lab conditions of theatre experimentation. Starting with Marlowe
and finishing with Congreve, The Ark will survey the 17th century as a means to whet
the company's appetite for the following season. WeÕll offer you a special sneak peek of
our work, The Jacobethan Imagination: from Riot to Restoration, for one night only.
Diane D'aquila
Photo: Laird Mackintosh