June 13, 2005 -

Ottawa -- In 2004, On the Verge, the National Arts Centre’s annual national festival of readings of new Canadian plays, traveled to Edmonton (its first trip away from home) with the Magnetic North Theatre Festival, Canada’s festival of contemporary Canadian theatre in English.   This year, both festivals are back in Ottawa, and, once again, On the Verge has been scheduled to coincide with the Magnetic North Theatre Festival, to bring Ottawans and theatre professionals from coast to coast a taste of what’s hot and happening in new playwriting in Canada.

On the Verge 2005 features six days of readings of eleven of the most intriguing, delightful and emotionally engaging new plays from across Canada.   Taking place in the NAC’s Fourth Stage from June 13 to 18, this year’s offerings include, for the first time, two readings of plays for young audiences.

Plays for this year’s On the Verge were selected from over 220 submissions by a reading panel from across Canada made up of NAC English Theatre Artistic Associate and Literary Manager Lise Ann Johnson, and respected theatre professionals Deena Aziz, Don Hannah, Ron Jenkins, Bill Lane, Joan MacLeod, Jenny Munday and Tanya Palmer.  Plays this year include work by artists from Halifax to Vancouver and points in between, including a Canadian translation of a play by renowned Japanese playwright Hisashi Inoue.

For a list of plays and a schedule of readings, please see below or visit the NAC Web Site at www.nac-cna.ca

There is no advance ticketing for this event, and access to readings will be on a first come, first served basis.  Admission to the readings is pay-what-you-can with all proceeds going to the Actors’ Fund of Canada.

The NAC English Theatre would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts and the NAC Donors’ Circle for their support of On the Verge.  Special thanks to the Cyril and Dorothy, Joel and Jill Reitman Foundation for helping to make On the Verge possible.

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For more information on On the Verge, contact:
Laura Denker
Publicity and Media Relations Coordinator
NAC English Theatre
(613) 947 7000 ext. 389;
ldenker@nac-cna.ca

On the Verge 2005 – Line up and Schedule
All readings take place in the NAC’s Fourth Stage
Admission is pay-what-you-can with proceeds to the Actors’ Fund of Canada
There is NO reserved seating for this event.

Scorched
By Wajdi Mouawad (Montreal)
Translated by Linda Gaboriau (Montreal)
Directed by Richard Rose

Monday, June 13 at 21:00

Scorched(original title: Incendies) is the story of Jeanne and her twin brother Simon, and their arduous journey up the lacerating thread of their mother Nawal’s life, to reveal the foundations on which they have built their own existence. Ultimately, the play is about three linked destinies searching to solve the enigma of their existence to discover, behind the darkest dune, the wellspring of beauty.

Missing
By Florence Gibson (Toronto)
Directed by David Ferry

Tuesday, June 14 at 15:00

Missing is a play about a woman who vanishes without a trace from a small Ontario farming community in the 1970's. It explores the repercussions of her disappearance on her family, the community and the life of a young woman detective assigned to the case.

Life Savers
By Serge Boucher (Montreal)
Translated by Shelley Tepperman (Montreal)
Directed by Eda Holmes
Co-presented by the Centre des auteurs dramatiques and Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal

Tuesday, June 14 at 21:00

One day France commits an act that sends her to prison, shatters her family, and throws her relationship with the world into question. Life Savers (original title: Les Bonbons qui Sauvent la Vie) leads us through five episodes in France’s life in prison.  She is visited by her estranged "perfect" sister; by her mother who lives in a permanent state of denial, and by her father, who threatens to renounce her if she strays from the straight and narrow. Interspersed with these intimate family moments are two episodes involving the extended family.  Gathered at the family home, the group struggles against their feelings of impotence, clings to delusions of normalcy, braces for the worst, and struggles to move on. Can the irreparable ever be repaired?

Dissecting Homo
By Brian Drader (Montreal)
Directed by Emma Tibaldo

Wednesday, June 15 at 15:00

Randolph Gitz is a Professor of Human Studies.  His partner, Dillan Smith, is an inter-sexed crack addict obsessed with Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.  Bart Fidel is a young male hustler who dreams of the perfect boyfriend, the elusive Danny Boy Kane, a bisexual biker who was responsible for bringing down an entire chapter of the Hell’s Angels in the largest drug raid in Quebec’s history. It’s a love story.

In the Garden, Two Suns
By Hisashi Inoue (Japan)
Translated by Roger Pulvers
Adapted by Marjorie Chan (Toronto) with Damien Atkins (Toronto)
Directed by Jim Millan
Presented with assistance from The Japan Foundation

Wednesday, June 15 at 21:00

When is being alive not the same as really living? Set in a humble Hiroshima apartment in 1947, a survivor of the atomic blast struggles to come to life again in a domestic story of a young librarian and her father.  A play about living after surviving and the rediscovery of the human things that make a heart do more than beat.

Bone Cage
By Catherine Banks (Halifax)
Directed by Tessa Mendel

Thursday, June 16 at 15:00

What is our relationship with the natural world? What does it do to us - as individuals and as communities - if we participate in the devastation of that world? Bone Cage, explores the social fallout when economic realities force men and women to participate in the stripping of their environment. A quirky, bleakly humorous, poetic evocation of life in an "idyllic" rural community.

Bombay Black
By Anosh Irani (Vancouver)
Directed by Brian Quirt
Thursday, June 16 at 21:00

Bombay Black is the story of Apsara, Bombay’s most infamous dancer, who lives with her mother Padma in an apartment by the sea.  She spends her nights entertaining high profile clients, until a blind man named Kamal shows up at her doorstep for a night of dance.  Bombay Black  is a play about betrayal, at turns lyrical and brutal as it charts the seduction of Apsara by Kamal, and Padma’s violent enmity toward the blind man and the secrets he holds.

Picking Up Chekhov
By Mansel Robinson (Saskatoon)
Directed by Don Kugler

Friday, June 17 at 15:00

Sikorski is a professional snoop who is tired of being spied on. His daughter Stevie is a teen-aged actress who is determined to be famous; or infamous; something. They drive. On the highway waits a hitchhiker who calls himself Chekhov.  And further down that road is a kid with a grudge, a mother with a heart, an ex with a beef – and twenty-seven witnesses who all have something to add to the story.

Blind
By Jonathan Garfinkel (Toronto)
Directed by Daryl Cloran

Friday, June 17 at 21:00

Scene:  A house in West Jerusalem, 2003
It’s Alex’s 16th birthday. All Alex wants is to learn the art of cunnilingus. His father Shemon gives him a gun so he can learn how to shoot Arabs. A Palestinian named Abu Dalo returns to the house to claim it as his own. A woman has walked from Jenin to bury her mother. Somehow these people are going to live together.  Or kill each other.

New at On the Verge 2005 –
Readings of plays for Young Audiences

Hana’s Suitcase
By Emil Sher (Toronto)
Based on the Book by Karen Levine
Directed by Allen MacInnis
Co-presented by the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People

Saturday, June 18 at 11:00

It’s March 2000. A child’s suitcase arrives from Auschwitz for an exhibit at the tiny Children’s Holocaust Centre in Tokyo, Japan.  Spurred on by children at the Centre, Fumiko Ishioka, curator and teacher, begins to search for more information about the life of Hana Brady. Hana’s name, age (13), and designation (Waisenkind or orphan), all painted on the side of the suitcase, are the only clues.

The Bookshop
By Marie-Josée Bastien (Québec)
Translated by Maureen Labonté (Montreal)
Directed by Frédéric Dubois
Co-presented by Le Théâtre du Gros Mécano

Saturday, June 18 at 15:00

The grand opening is today!  This morning, Jeanne finally became the proud owner of the old corner bookshop.  But books aren’t the only thing Jeanne will find interesting in her new life: there’s the intriguing owner of the chocolate shop next door, and what about the strange character who shows up one night looking for a book that went missing over seventy years ago?