October 4 - November 6, 2011

True Nature

By Colleen Curran
Directed by Amanda Kellock

SYNOPSIS

She sells sea shells down by the sea shore...

Mary Anning’s love of discovery may have led to the heart of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.

There are romantic, comic and heart-breaking consequences when lightning strikes a circle of midlife friends. True Nature is an amusing and beautiful interweaving of sciences with social class, paralleling the lives of two women, a dedicated contemporary academic and her hero, the extraordinary but silenced palaeontologist, Mary Anning.

Montreal award-winning playwrigh, Colleen Curran effortlessly entertains while unfolding the worlds of two women from different centuries whose friendships and loves are similarly unearthed from one seaside’s fossilized past.

VIDEO - Opening Night

VIDEO - In Rehearsal

SNEAK PEEK

AUDIO

Ange-Aimée Woods, Arts Reporter, Homerun CBC Radio One talks about True Nature, Centaur Theatre's Season opener. October 4, 2011

Part 1

Part 2

SUGGESTED READING

From the authour of Girl With A Pearl Earing, Tracy Chevalier's Remarkable Creatures is the perfect companion read to our 43rd Season's first production.

In 1810, a sister and brother uncover the fossilized skull of an unknown animal in the cliffs on the south coast of England. With its long snout and prominent teeth, it might be a crocodile – except that it has a huge, bulbous eye.

Remarkable Creatures is the story of Mary Anning, who has a talent for finding fossils, and whose discovery of ancient marine reptiles such as that ichthyosaur shakes the scientific community and leads to new ways of thinking about the creation of the world.

Working in an arena dominated by middle-class men, however, Mary finds herself out of step with her working-class background. In danger of being an outcast in her community, she takes solace in an unlikely friendship with Elizabeth Philpot, a prickly London spinster with her own passion for fossils.

The strong bond between Mary and Elizabeth sees them through struggles with poverty, rivalry and ostracism, as well as the physical dangers of their chosen obsession. It reminds us that friendship can outlast storms and landslides, anger and and jealousy. Source: www.tchevalier.com