Spooning with Soulpepper
If you’ve seen and enjoyed Soulpepper’s Spoon River, a fine musical adaptation of Edgar Lee Masters’ poetry cycle Spoon River Anthology, you can now own an audio version of the production, with music written by the talented Mike Ross and performed by an 18-member troupe that includes company regulars, guest artists and many of the current Soulpepper Academy members.
The first Soulpepper project of its type, the recording is available either as a CD or a digital download the cost is $20.
The score is a treat, with music ranging from foot-stompers to mournful ballads and inspiring anthems.
And if you haven’t caught the show, the last performance is Thursday (April 2).
Tickets and the audio recording are both available at soulpepper.ca.
Spring Garden
Just in time for spring, Obsidian Theatre launches its annual development series of new plays.
Leading off is a reading of Lisa Codrington’s Up The Garden Path, in which a young Bajan woman in the late 1960s travels to Canada dressed as a man to work in a Niagara region vineyard. Billed as a comedy, the play involves ghosts, cannons and the threat of starlings.
Company artistic director Philip Akin helms a cast that includes Abena Malika, Cara Ricketts, Araya Mengesha, Sochi Fried, Peter Bailey and Simon Bracken.
The Saturday (April 4) 2 pm performance is at Dancemaker’s Studio, Case Goods Lane #314. Space is limited RSVP to office@obsidiantheatre.com.
The second show is a reading of Meghan Swaby’s Venus’ Daughter, inspired by the life of Sara Bartmaan, known as the Hottentot Venus, who was exhibited as a human curiosity in early 18th-century England and France. That’s scheduled for April 18 RSVP to the same address.
Opening the HATCH
Harbourfront Centre’s HATCH, one of Toronto’s most experimental workshop performance series, begins its 11th year with a trio of shows curated by Evan Webber, associate artist at Public Recording.
This year’s artists – red light district, Amelia Ehrhardt and the female collective WIVES – focus on works using the “dual axes of faithfulness and audacity.”
First up is red light district, with Ted Witzel and Lauren Gillis offering an interpretation of the marquise of O–, based on Heinrich von Kleist’s novel about forced seduction. The public performance is April 19.
Choreographer Ehrhardt’s work commemorates the 102nd anniversary of Nijinsky’s setting of Stravinsky’s groundbreaking Rite Of Spring. Performance is April 25.
The series ends with the WIVES’s feeled, which uses professional sports as its model. Performance is May 2.
For more information see harbourfrontcentre.com/hatch.
