The Children - Program

the children BY

Lucy Kirkwood

A CANADIAN STAGE AND CENTAUR THEATRE CO -PRODUCTION

SEP 25 - OCT 21, 2018 Berkeley Street Theatre

cast RO B I N

GEORDIE JOHNSON HA ZE L

LAURIE PATON ROS E

FIONA REID

Geordie Johnson

Laurie Paton

Fiona Reid

Eda Holmes

Eo Sharp

Bonnie Beecher

John Gzowski

Christine Horne

Maria Popoff

Meghan Froebelius

creative team D I R EC TO R

EDA HOLMES S E T & COSTU M E D E S I G N E R

EO SHARP LI G HTI N G D E S I G N E R

BONNIE BEECHER SO U N D D E S I G N E R

JOHN GZOWSKI A S S I STANT D I R EC TO R

CHRISTINE HORNE* STAG E MANAG E R

MARIA POPOFF AP P R E NTI CE STAG E MANAG E R

MEGHAN FROEBELIUS R U N TI M E : 9 0 M I N UTE S , N O I NTE R M I S S IO N

SEASON SPONSOR

The Children was first performed at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Sloane Square, London, on November 17, 2017, and was produced on Broadway by the Manhattan Theatre Club (Lynne Meadow, Artistic Director; Barry Grove, Executive Producer) and the Royal Court Theatre on November 28, 2017.

The Royal Court commissioned The Children with a generous grant from the Berwin Lee New Play Commission.

The Children is presented by special arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc., New York. *The services of Christine Horne were made possible through Theatre Ontario’s Professional Theatre Training Program, funded by the Ontario Arts Council.

cast GEORDIE JOHNSON Robin

Geordie Johnson has worked across Canada, as well as Britain, Europe, the Middle East, the United States, and New Zealand.

Theatre credits include leading roles at the Stratford and Shaw Festivals, Citadel, Theatre Calgary, Neptune, Centaur, RMTC, National Arts Centre, Theatre Aquarius, Great Canadian Theatre Company, Mirvish, Tarragon, Canadian Stage, Young People’s Theatre, Soulpepper, Buddies in Bad Times, Alumnae Theatre Company, Yale Rep, Regent’s Park, Theatr Clwyd. Television and film credits include Acceptable Risk, Copper, Durham County, Largo Winch, Traders, Dracula: The Series, The English Patient, On the Basis of Sex. Mr. Johnson is a recipient of Gemini, Dora, and Merritt Awards.

LAURIE PATON Hazel

Laurie is thrilled to be back at Canadian Stage as Hazel in The Children. She was last seen as Deirdre Blake in Citadel Theatre and Canadian Stage’s co-production of The Humans. Laurie has worked in theatres across the country, most notable for 18 seasons with the Shaw Festival, with favourite roles including: Stella Livingston in Light Up The Sky, Madame Ranyavskaya in The Cherry Orchard, Regina in Little Foxes, Ludmilla in Hotel Peccadillo, Constance in The Constant Wife, Vera in Pal Joey, The Actress in Blood Relations. Laurie is a Dora Mavor Moore and Jessie Award Nominated actor for her roles in Bobs Kingdom and All My Sons. Next season she will be performing at Bard on the Beach in Vancouver.

FIONA REID Rose

Fiona Reid is one of Canada’s best-known stage actors, having performed in theatres across the country, including five seasons with Stratford and thirteen seasons at Shaw, as well as theatres in Great Britain and the U.S. Over her career her performances have garnered her three Dora Mavor Moore awards, a Jessie Award (Vancouver) and a Sterling Award (Edmonton). In 2015, Fiona

received the Toronto Theatre Critics Award for her performance as Sonia in Vanya, Sonia, Masha and Spike (Mirvish Productions). She has performed in many Canadian Stage productions, most recently in London Road in 2010 (Dora Award - Ensemble). Fiona has been honoured with ACTRA’s Award of Excellence, the Order of Canada, and the Barbara Hamilton Memorial Award.

Fiona received an honorary doctorate from Bishop’s University and is a graduate of McGill University. She is past president of the AFC, formerly the Actors’ Fund of Canada.

creative team LUCY KIRKWOOD Playwright

Lucy Kirkwood is a playwright and screenwriter. In 2009, her play It Felt Empty When The Heart Went At First But It Is Alright Now was produced by Clean Break at the Arcola Theatre. Nominated for an Evening Standard Award for Best Newcomer, it made Lucy joint winner of the John Whiting Award. Chimerica premiered at the Almeida Theatre in 2013 and transferred to the West End, earning Best New Play at the Olivier and Evening Standard Awards, as well as the Critics Circle and Susan Smith Blackburn Award. Recent work includes Mosquitoes at the National Theatre in 2017, and The Children, which premiered at the Royal Court in 2016, and opened on Broadway at Manhattan Theatre Club in 2017.

EDA HOLMES Director

Currently Artistic and Executive Director for Centaur Theatre, Eda has directed across the country, most notably at the Shaw Festival where she was Associate Director until 2017.

Selected credits at Shaw include Cat on a ­ Hot Tin Roof, Arcadia, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Grand Hotel. She has won several awards for her work including Toronto Dora Awards for the musical Little Mercy’s First Murder and Michel Marc Bouchard’s Tom at the Farm.

She is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada’s Directing Programme.

Prior to becoming a theatre director she was a soloist with San Francisco Ballet and William Forsythe’s Frankfurt Ballet.

EO SHARP

CHRISTINE HORNE

Eo Sharp has designed in theatres across the country. Her work has been presented in venues ranging from a moving elevator to Stratford’s Festival Theatre. For Canadian Stage: Love and Information and Saint Carmen of the Main. She has twice designed shows commissioned by the prestigious Festival TransAmerique and three times represented Canada at the Prague Quadrennial. Eo has worked with artists including Peter Hinton, Mike Payette, Stacey Christodoulou, Antoni Cimolino, John Wood, ahdri zhina mandiela, Micheline Chevrier and Martha Henry. She has been nominated twelve times for Design Awards as well as having won awards for the designs of Human Collision/Atomic Reaction, Looking for Romeo, Red and Saint Carmen of the Main.

Born and raised in Aurora, Ontario, Christine has been working as an actor since graduating from York University’s Theatre Program in 2004. Recent stage credits include Portia’s Julius Caesar (Shakespeare in the Ruff), Prince Hamlet (Why Not Theatre), Asking For It (Crow’s/Nightwood), Vimy (Soulpepper), Tom At The Farm (Buddies in Bad Times), The Seagull (Crow’s), and Belleville (Company Theatre). Her film work includes Hyena Road

by Paul Gross, The Captive by Atom Egoyan, and Stories We Tell by Sarah Polley. Christine has received a Dora Award, a Canadian Screen Award, and the Birks Diamond Tribute to Women in Film. She is grateful to Theatre Ontario for this opportunity to train in directing with Eda Holmes.

Set & Costume Designer

Assistant Director

BONNIE BEECHER

MARIA POPOFF

Bonnie has designed the lighting for over 350 productions for theatre, opera and dance across Canada and internationally. Recent work includes Romeo and Juliet (Ballet Im Revier, Germany), A Secret Garden (Theatre Calgary), Innocence Lost and La Bête (Soulpepper), Oh! What a Lovely War (Shaw), and Paradise Lost (Stratford). Upcoming projects include Hadrian (Canadian Opera Company), The Wars (The Grand Theatre), The Runner (Human Cargo/Theatre Passe Muraille), and Akhnaten (Dortmund Opera, Germany).

Bonnie lives in Toronto. bonniebeecher.com

Selected credits: Helen Lawrence, Ain’t Misbehavin, Urinetown, Little Shop of Horrors, The Queens, Richard III, Edward IV, Henry V, Twelfth Night, Divided We Stand, Flowers (Canadian Stage). Hamlet, Comedy of Errors, Long Day’s Journey Into Night. (Stratford). Ronnie Burkett’s 10 Days On Earth, Australia, New Zealand, England, Austria. World Premieres: Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) (Nightwood Theatre). David Suzuki’s Legacy Lecture. Royal Ontario Museum’s opening ceremony of the Michael Lee-Chin Crystal.

BaAM Productions: MLB Fanfest New York, St Louis, Kansas City, and Minnesota’s Civic Fest. Current Film and Television: Onset Costume Supervisor: ANNE, HOLLY HOBBIE. Stage Management Coach at The National Theatre School of Canada.

Lighting Designer

JOHN GZOWSKI Sound Designer

Composer, sound designer, musician and instrument maker, Gzowski has worked on over 200 theatre, dance and film productions.

His theatre work has won him 6 Doras, from 18 nominations for companies like Stratford, Shaw Festival, Luminato, National Arts Centre, the Mirvishes, MTC, the Arts Club, Canadian Stage, Soulpepper, Dancemakers, Red Sky Performance, Tarragon, Factory Theatre and YPT. He has played on numerous CDs, including Patricia O’Callaghan, Tasa, Autorickshaw as well as a Juno nomination with Maza Meze. He has run Canada’s first microtonal group, touring Canada playing the works of Harry Partch, composed and performed with several new music groups and worked as co-artistic director of the Music Gallery.

Stage Manager

MEGHAN FROEBELIUS Apprentice Stage Manager

Meghan is a recent graduate of The National Theatre School of Canada and a not-so-recent graduate of Queen’s University. Credits include three seasons at The Thousand Islands Playhouse and soon will include a season at The Shaw Festival. Love and gratitude to her family and friends who never fail to provide acceptance and support for this crazy life we lead in the theatre.

DIRECTOR’S NOTE Despite the chaotic times that we are enduring, those of us who live in the relative comfort, prosperity and safety of Western Civilization are easily outraged when told we can’t have something we want. As unprecedented wildfires rage in California, Ontario and B.C. we continue to start up our cars and send carbon dioxide into the ozone. Even those among us who are not climate change deniers will take an airplane to a vacation destination on the grounds that we have worked hard and we deserve the break. But it is becoming clearer and clearer that we can’t go on living like this.

Playwright Lucy Kirkwood’s original plan was to write a play about climate change. The characters – all born just after WWII – come from the generation who believed that it was their job to change the world. The 1970’s was an amazing period of social activism that led to real progress. According to New York Times journalist Nathaniel Rich, there was a 10-year period between 1979 and 1989 when world leaders came within a few signatures of endorsing a binding global framework to reduce carbon emissions.

In the end the play doesn’t address climate change directly but rather lives in the nexus between the idealism of youth and the anxiety of the realization that time only moves one way. The decisions we make as young people on both a micro and a macro level define the lives we will live and the world we will leave behind. The play illuminates the human capacity for invention and joy in the face of hardship as well as our insistence on making things harder for ourselves whenever possible. Ultimately Lucy Kirkwood’s play asks the question “What are we willing to give up for the next generation?” It is a provocative, funny and ultimately moving portrait of who we are as a society right this minute. As the world warms up, we may all be forced to ask ourselves that question.

EDA HOLM ES

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR’S NOTE “Death becomes familiar as we get older. We become less afraid of death. If we don’t take responsibility, who will?” - Kazuko Sasaki, 72, co-founder of The Skilled Veterans Corps, a group of more than 200 Japanese pensioners who volunteered to enter the failing Fukushima nuclear power station in 2011.

For a play called The Children, there is a notable absence of children. But there is plenty of childish behavior. Lucy Kirkwood’s characters tirelessly avoid direct confrontation, abdicate personal responsibility, and deny basic reality. Their behaviour is a microcosm of our entire society – a society that remains unwilling to make the sacrifices necessary to protect the planet for future generations.

Fear of death permeates The Children and I wonder: is Kirkwood suggesting that the terror of our own mortality keeps us from taking decisive action today for the betterment of our planet? Does the thought of making sacrifices for a distant future (that won’t include us) remind us of our own mortality and is this why we shun the obvious choices that we should be making in a blind effort to keep the fantasy of our own immortality alive?

Hemingway famously wrote: “When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for.” One’s ability to love is at the core of one’s desire to undergo self sacrifice.

For me, The Children reveals that we all remain children as long as we have not learned to love completely. And, as long as we are stuck in this undeveloped stage of existence, our planet and subsequent generations will have to carry the burden of our immaturity.

Fortunately, activating our heart is the most fulfilling thing that we can do with our time.

Thank you for joining us. We look forward to seeing you again this season.

BRENDAN HE ALY