This season we invite you to step out and take a journey that celebrates the joys and sorrows of navigating through the modern world by looking at our recent past. With all the stresses of daily life in these challenging times, let us transport you to another time and place in the way that only live theatre can, providing an opportunity to share in the delight, the drama and adventure of being human. We hope you will take the opportunity to treat yourself just a little and continue to make Centaur a vital part of your cultural life in Montreal by subscribing to the 2009-2010 season.
We open with a world premiere by Steve Galluccio, the author of Centaur’s beloved Mambo Italiano. In Piazza San Domenico takes us to a steamy Naples square, circa 1952, for a hilarious romp filled with romance and misunderstandings. The provocative and gripping thriller Death and The Maiden by Cuban writer Ariel Dorfman pits a woman against her suspected rapist from her time as a political prisoner. Michel & ti-Jean, a world premiere by Quebec’s George Rideout, is an inspired fictional 1960s encounter between a dispirited Jack Kerouac and his biggest fan, a young, enthusiastic playwright named Michel Tremblay who has just taken Quebec by storm with his play Les Belles Soeurs. Centaur’s first classical theatre production in several years will feature an amazing Montreal cast in a modern interpretation of Shakespeare’s madcap The Comedy of Errors, a co-production with The National Arts Centre. Michel Marc Bouchard’s haunting and humorous fable The Madonna Painter or The Birth of a Painting takes us to Lac St-Jean at the end of the Great War and a search for the perfect model to pose for a painting meant to inspire and renew faith in the village. We conclude with Brooke Johnson’s sweet and moving Trudeau Stories, which tells of her twenty-year-plus platonic yet profound friendship with the inimitable P.E.T.
Brave New Looks, The Wildside Festival, Urban Tales and other events throughout the season add to the vibrant diversity Centaur Theatre is renowned for. Join us and play a role in our success as we celebrate over four decades of excellent English language theatre artistry in Montreal. We look forward to seeing you at Centaur.
Sincerely,
Roy Surette, Artistic and Executive Director
In Piazza San Domenico
WORLD PREMIERE
October 6 – November 1, 2009
By Steve Galluccio
Directed By Roy Surette
From the author of Mambo Italiano comes a light-hearted and thoroughly entertaining comedy about love, lust and misunderstandings, inspired by Feydeau, Goldini and Sophia Loren. It’s a burning hot August in Naples, 1952 – “earthquake weather” and the citizens of Piazza San Domenico are all stirred up when Carmelina Benevento suddenly faints upon hearing some bad news about her fiancé, Guido.
A series of conspicuous sightings between people provoke gossip. Misinterpretations ensue as the players contrive their own schemes and desperately
try to keep face. But love and earth tremors have a way of setting things straight.
Death And The Maiden
November 3 – December 6, 2009
By Ariel Dorfman
Directed by Gordon McCall
In this emotionally charged 20th century classic thriller, Paulina Escobar, a former political prisoner, is forced to confront demons from her past after her husband, Gerardo, gets a flat tire and is driven home by their distant neighbour, Dr. Miranda. Convinced that Miranda was part of the old fascist regime that tortured and raped her while blindfolded, she takes him captive in order to extract a confession. Meanwhile her husband, a lawyer, is torn between his wife, with her sombre memory and psychological repressions, and the law. As the married couple seek out the truth about the clouded past, tension mounts to a startling conclusion.
Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play
Winner of London Time Out Award for Best Play of 1991
Michel & ti-Jean
February 2 – March 7, 2010
By George Rideout
Directed by Sarah Garton Stanley
In 1969, 27-year-old Michel Tremblay, having just published Les Belles Soeurs, sets out to meet his favourite writer, the “king of the Beatniks”; Jack Kerouac, at a bar in St. Petersburg, Florida. Despite an initial reticence on Kerouac’s part, the two prolific writers hit it off and share their thoughts on the art of writing, inspirations, sports, music, religion and the most innate quality they share: their Quebecois heritage. Though fictitious, Michel & ti-Jean is an evocative and spirited glimpse into the poetic and philosophical world of North American literature.
The Comedy of Errors
March 2 – 28, 2010
A co-production with the National Arts Centre
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Peter Hinton
Inspired by Montreal's crazed summer festival season, this modern look at one of Shakespeare's earliest and most romantic comedies, tells the story of a family divided by business and brought together again by love. Two sets of identical twins, after 33 years apart, find themselves in the bustling city of Ephesus, where deals are made and fortune lurks behind every corner. Mistaken identities, infidelity, wrongful beatings and even demonic possession all fly in the face of a family utterly lost, who, in this comedy of accidents, gain a richer understanding of who they truly are.
The Madonna Painter, or The Birth of a Painting
ENGLISH-LANGUAGE PREMIERE
March 30 – May 2, 2010
By Michel Marc Bouchard
Translated by Linda Gaboriau
Directed by Roy Surette
In 1918 a handsome young priest settles in a village in Lac Saint-Jean. Determined to inspire the faith he believes will protect the town from the onset of the Spanish flu, he commissions a visiting Italian painter by the name of Alessandro to create a fresco depicting the Blessed Virgin. With the financial backing of a misanthropic doctor, he sets out to recruit a model from among the village women, all of whom are deeply fixed in their own medieval-like mythologies and martyr and saint roles. Just when the perfect model has been picked the plan takes a turn for the worst. Set against a rich imagistic backdrop of iconography, sex and blood, this dark and humorous fable explores the collision of ecstasies, secrets and lies in the face of an impending epidemic.
Trudeau Stories
May 4 – June 6, 2010
A Long Black Car production
Written and performed by Brooke Johnson
Directed by Allyson McMackon
In 1985, while she was a student at the National Theatre School, Brooke Johnson became friends with Pierre Elliott Trudeau. It had been a year-and-a-half since his walk in the snow, and while he was no longer doing pirouettes behind the Queen, he was sometimes hanging around with Brooke, sliding down ice-covered staircases on Mount Royal. This personal insight into the man and the times, as seen through the eyes of a passionate artist, is not to be missed. Vivid and charming, poignant and very funny, Trudeau Stories is about friendship and loss and about who we think we are.