Studio 180
It wasn’t quite a Mickey-Judy “Hey, let’s put on a show,” but the co-founders of Studio 180 got together in 2002 simply as old theatre friends who wanted to work together. The riveting result was the professional Canadian premiere – remounted the following year – of The Laramie Project, an examination of responses to the murder of gay student Matthew Shepard. The show demonstrated what’s special about Studio 180: its ability to gather a strong ensemble and the gutsiness with which it tackles socially relevant theatre, always providing material to discuss once the curtain falls.
The company struck gold again with The Arab-Israeli Cookbook (an assembly of voices offering prismatic views on the coexistence of Israelis and Palestinians), Stuff Happens (a docudrama about the foolishness and fearsomeness of the Bush administration) and the melancholy Bard update Offensive Shadows.