The first annual Patrick Conner Award, honouring the memory of the talented, generous theatre artist and eco worker, will be held Monday, August 26, beginning at 6 pm.
Two individuals working in the areas in which Conner was passionately involved will each receive cash awards of $2,500.
But there’s more to the evening than that. Chef Yasser Qahawish from Artisinale will serve a three-course meal made from local, sustainable ingredients, and the winners of the award will create a short piece emphasizing their dedication to the ideals Conner promoted.
There’ll be other entertainment, too, by his friends and associates Ryan Kelly, R. Kelly Clipperton, Gwyneth Baillie, Jim LeFrançois and members of Shadowland, who will perform a piece about food drawn from their full-length production The Essence Of Ambrose Ichor.
The location couldn’t be any more appropriate: the Green Roof of the Carrot Common, where Conner worked.
Tickets are $75 and available here. For more information about Conner, the award and the event, see theatrerusticle.org.
Matthews goes Dark
Sharron Matthews already holds the crown for first-rate cabaret performer, and now she’s expanding in a new direction with Full Dark.
Matthews is workshopping the show Saturday and Sunday (August 17 and 18) at Buddies, where she’s the current artist in residence.
Delving into the sinister side of storytelling, she’ll be creating what she calls “songologues” that deal with bullying, sexuality and danger, the unacceptable and the unexplained. Her musical sources include Jessie J., Usher, Elton John, Rihanna, Florence and the Machine, Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, Beyoncé and the Righteous Brothers.
If you want to know more about Matthews’s process, check out her YouTube channel.
See listing.
Classic pair
Theatre artist Bill Kischuck hasn’t been in Toronto for years – he’s now located in Tokyo – but he returns with two works based on classic texts that deal with family relationships.
That family theme neatly ties to the productions, since both feature Kischuck, his son, Liam, and daughter, Mary.
In his adaptation of King Lear, Kischuck takes on multiples roles, with Mary playing Cordelia and the Fool (a possible performance doubling in Shakespeare’s time) and Liam as half-brothers Edgar and Edmund.
The three also appear in Kischuck’s version of Sheila Watson’s novel The Double Hook, a seminal work of Canadian fiction. Like Lear, the novel explores the problematic way family members deal with each other.
See listing.
Kincardine highlands
Going out of town this month and want to see some theatre while doing the cottage thing?
One of the Ontario summer theatres you probably haven’t heard about is Sundown Theatre, located in Kincardine.
A troupe of Toronto theatre artists, including artistic director Mariel Marshall, are taking part in the company’s second season, which features a new work by Claire Wynveen, The Selkie Of Kincardine. A selkie is a mythical Scottish creature that is human on land but a seal in the water.
Set outdoors in Dunsmoor Park and using the shore of Lake Huron as its backdrop, the show deals with love and transformation.
Directed by Matthew Thomas Walker, it features Jiv Parasram, Meredith Zwicker, Adrian Proszowski and Dan Daley, with Marshall as narrator.
You’ll be hearing more from Walker and Wynveen in the fall, when they’re back in Toronto. They’re part of Litmus Theatre, the company that did the wonderful, pared-down Matchbox Macbeth a few years ago. This coming season they’re tackling another classic, Frankenstein, based on Mary Shelley’s novel and her own life.
For The Selkie Of Kincardine, see listing.
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