In a media statement that accompanied the announcement of Tarragon’s forthcoming programming, artistic director Richard Rose noted a focus on diversity for the season’s stories and storytellers.Peter Harte
A prodigal playwright returns.
One of the two world premieres among the seven plays of the Tarragon Theatre's 2018-19 Toronto season is The Message, a long-in-the-works look at the Canadian media guru and "the medium is the message" theorist Marshall McLuhan, from playwright Jason Sherman.
The Message deals with the last year of the life of McLuhan, who died in 1980. The play was scheduled to be part of Tarragon's 2003-04 season, but the production was waylaid when the McLuhan estate threatened legal action. A planned reading at Harbourfront Centre during the city's World Stage festival was cancelled.
Sherman is Tarragon's current playwright-in-residence, a position he held to much applause for most of the 1990s – the fertile period which produced The Retreat, Patience, An Acre of Time and three plays helmed by current Tarragon artistic director Richard Rose: It's All True, Remnants and 1994's Three in the Back, Two in the Head, which received the Governor- General's Award for Drama.
Since his residency, Sherman has concentrated on writing for television and radio, including the CBC Radio series Afghanada (2006-11). With his latest effort, Sherman is reunited with Rose, who will direct The Message.
In a media statement that accompanied the announcement of Tarragon's forthcoming programming, Rose noted the diversity of the season's stories and storytellers. "We will present a culturally rich season of plays that reflects our country's history, engages with contemporary Canada and looks to our future."
To that end, Rose and Tarragon will bring in Kiviuq Returns: An Inuit Epic, a creation from the Arctic theatre company Qaggiq, which had a single performance in Toronto in 2017 after a brief tour to Banff, Alta., Iqaluit and the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. The production (described as an "Inuit Odyssey") is performed in Inuktitut with English surtitles.
The season opens in September, 2018, with a revival of Harlem Duet from Governor-General's Literary Award winner Djanet Sears. Conceived as a Harlem-set prequel to Shakespeare's Othello, the 1997 drama was the first play at Stratford Festival by a black writer, with a black female director and an all-black cast.
Besides The Message, the season's other world premiere is Guarded Girls, written by Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman. The drama deals with the psychological destruction brought on by solitary confinement.
Other plays include Norman Yeung's Theory, a topical story about a young professor who tests the limits of free speech by encouraging her students to contribute to an unmoderated discussion group. Making its Toronto premiere is New Magic Valley Fun Town, a Cape Breton story from Daniel MacIvor. Rounding out the season is the Hannah Moscovitch musical Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, a production of Halifax's 2b theatre company.
Subscriptions and tickets will go on sale at tarragontheatre.com.
King Lear's days as a king may be numbered. Long the preserve of veteran male actors, the monumental Shakespearean role is finally being tackled, again and again, by women.
Brad Wheeler