Alligator Pie Playbill

alligator Pie Dennis Lee

CREATED BY INS CHOI, RAQUEL DUFFY, KEN MACKENZIE, GREGORY PREST & MIKE ROSS

artist note: Mike Ross Oh, about 12 years ago or so I inexplicably started writing songs to Dennis Lee poems. It wasn’t a tribute to a man whose work I had devoured as a child, like so many of you here to watch this show. I (and please forgive me this trespass) grew up in New Jersey… born in Canada (so at least I have that) but raised in South Jersey. So Dennis Lee’s stuff did not once enter my consciousness in those “Dennis Lee” years. In a fluke-y twist of needing some words to fill a melody I had been writing, I threw some of Dennis’s verse in to play stand-in until I wrote something better. Something better never came because what that had created was immediately irreplaceable. This project snowballed until it was an album. Then it snowballed some more and it became a show that Lorenzo Savoini and I created called Civil Elegies, directed by Albert Schultz. And now I guess it was time for some more snowballing and so Albert put five of us together, called us the Creation Ensemble, and tasked us with taking Dennis’s entire body of children’s verse and creating a world. So now I have partners in crime. Ken, Gregory, Raquel, and Ins. Four of the best people I have ever known in my life. And we’ve spent the last six months (on and off) immersed in the world that Dennis has built over the years. What a joy!

Celebration breeds celebration. By celebrating Dennis we celebrate Toronto. By celebrating Toronto we celebrate who we are, and that’s something we don’t do enough of around here.

Bringing the genius of Dennis Lee to life is among the greatest honours we’ve ever had. It feels much bigger than us. It connects us to who we are as people, as Torontonians, as Canadians, as citizens. So here’s to a new generation falling as in love as we are with the silly, beautiful world of Dennis Lee.

Mike Ross, Creation Ensemble

a message from the artistic director I have been dreaming of a Creation Ensemble for several years… ever since Mike Ross came blasting out of our first Academy and began galvanizing our company with musical invention. The idea was to bring a group of deeply gifted people together, all graduates of the Soulpepper Academy, and all in possession of certain vital traits: abandon, invention, and generosity of spirit. Raquel, Ken, Ins, Gregory and Mike are five ridiculously gifted creators and performers. They are also five of the sweetest people you would ever want to meet.

The plan is to have this ensemble work on many projects, and it felt appropriate to have this one be the first. Dennis Lee is a national treasure. His whimsy and word magic has awakened and tickled the fancies of two generations of Canadian children, and it has been a very moving and joyful experience to watch these five grown artists return to a state of playful wonder in the presence of Dennis’s shimmering poems.

Welcome to the playground.

Albert Schultz, Artistic Director

illustration: brian rea

 Alligator Pie Dennis Lee

Canada 2012

CREATED BY INS CHOI, RAQUEL DUFFY, KEN MACKENZIE, GREGORY PREST & MIKE ROSS

production

creation ensemble

Ken MacKenzie Production designer

Ins Choi Raquel Duffy Ken MacKenzie Gregory Prest Mike Ross

Adam Harendorf Sound Designer Ashlyn Ireland stage manager Kate Duncan Apprentice stage manager

production sponsor

Copies of Dennis Lee's Alligator Pie will be on sale in the lobby.

Poems by Dennis Lee are used with the permission of the author and publishers HarperCollins Canada.

There will be no intermission. Approximate running time 1 hour.

background notes Millions of children are introduced to Dennis Lee’s poetry in their beds. A certain hour comes and they must stop playing and surrender – kicking and screaming all the way – to the end of another day. The sweet, funny, crooked, crafty rhymes of Alligator Pie and other Lee books, have accompanied several generations of Canadian parents and children as they replay the age-old bedtime rituals.

We only have to look at those beds and the poems begin floating through our memories.

There’s an irresistible verve and love of wordplay in Dennis Lee’s writing. Margaret Laurence described its pitch-perfect beat perfectly: You can almost hear the skipping rope slapping the sidewalk.

When asked about when Alligator Pie was first published, Dennis Lee has been known to say: “Over a century ago, my dear.” His math may be a little shaky (the book came out in 1974), but we know what he means. In that year, Pierre Trudeau was Prime Minister. Richard Nixon was about to take his last ride on Air Force One. Alanis Morissette was newly born.

In that faraway disco era, Dennis Lee had a road to Damascus experience with a famous nursery rhyme superstar. It wasn’t pretty. The father of young children was shocked into action when he realized that, “Mother Goose was an imperialistic conspiracy and I had this profound cosmological insight with it: That it was all a plot to infiltrate the brain boxes of two-and-a-half year olds and make us think we lived somewhere else and that our own time and place had no right to be played upon by the imagination.”

So our poetic firebrand set about writing for and about here-and-now Canadian children, using Canadian place names to boot: a revolutionary act at the time. Lee describes his books as “hell-bent for election rides of feeling, thought and exploration.” A poetic ride with Dennis Lee always includes story poems, tender lullabies, poems that are jokey and even rude, and, to his readers’ particular delight, a few subversive, nasty little rhymes too – just to goose Mother Goose. Each poem stands on its own but a sense of continuity carries the reader – and listener – easily, breezily from beginning to end.

Soulpepper’s newly formed Creation Ensemble consists of five multi-talented graduates of the Soulpepper Academy. Over the last few months the Creation Ensemble of Ins Choi, Raquel Duffy, Ken MacKenzie, Gregory Prest and Mike Ross have played, created, composed, invented, riffed and explored in a hell-bent for election rehearsal period. So settle back in your seats and prepare for a riotous, rambunctious time. And by the end we know you’ll agree: Give away the green grass Give away the sky But don’t give away my Alligator Pie.

Biography Dennis Lee is Toronto's first Poet Laureate, an Officer of the Order of Canada and the author of timeless children's collections such as Alligator Pie, Garbage Delight, Jelly Belly, Bubblegum Delicious and The Ice Cream Store. He has received many honours, including the Vicky Metcalf Award for his body of work, and is also an acclaimed poet for adults. His poetry is anthologized and read around the world.

Background Notes by Associate Artist Paula Wing.

soulpepper production Jacqueline Robertson-Cull

Geoff Hughes cutter

head of hair & makeup

Janet Pym Natalie Swiercz

Mike Keays carpenter

dressers

Greg Chambers

Duncan Johnstone

props builder

scenic artist

Soulpepper Theatre Company is an active member of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (pact), the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts (tapa) and Theatre Ontario, and engages, under the terms of the Canadian Theatre Agreement, professional artists who are members of Canadian Actors’ Equity Association. Scenic Artists and Set Decorators employed by Soulpepper Theatre Company are represented by Local 828 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.

Imagination, Innovation, Inspiration.

Macquarie is proud to support Soulpepper Theatre Company’s original production of Alligator Pie.

Macquarie Group is a global provider of banking, financial, advisory, investment and funds management services. Founded in 1969, Macquarie now employs more than 14,200 people in 28 countries.

macquarie.com

YOUNG CENTRE FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS DISTILLERY HISTORIC DISTRICT