Farther west playbill

PL AYBILL farther west

FARTHER WEST JOHN MURRELL }{

a pproxi m at e ru n ni ng t i m e: 2 hou rs t her e w ill be one 20 m i nu t e i n t er m ission

TIDBITS

ARTIST NOTE: TARA NICODEMO Today is Sunday, our day off from rehearsals this week, and we all got together for a BBQ. I think that means that we like each other; a sentiment that I believe is one of the many ingredients required to create something special. I’m starting to have the feeling that we are doing just that.

Other ingredients include a director like Diana who is giving us both freedom and trust to follow our instincts, fall on our faces and play. Then there are Mr. Murrell’s words. They flow (or sometimes stumble) out of us like notes on a piano, like sharp blades, a baby’s cry, a belly laugh; they have purpose and are relentless.

I have walked through the Soulpepper doors many many times to see shows. Tomorrow morning I get to walk through them again but this time to rehearse. I am, to say the least, so very grateful for the generosity this company has shown me, has shown us all, a cast filled with many new faces. I hope you enjoy your journey Farther West with us.•

Romance is defined this way

by The Free Dictionary online: a. A long fictitious tale of heroes and extraordinary or mysterious events, usually set in a distant time or place. b. A n artistic work, such as a novel, story, or film, that deals with sexual love, especially in an idealized form. c. A fictitiously embellished account or explanation.

Some other female pioneers of May Buchanan’s time are: Jennie Trout Canada’s first woman licensed to practice medicine.

Grace Lockhart The first woman in the British Empire to graduate with a Bachelor of Arts (from Mount Allison University).

Augusta Stowe-Gullen The first woman to graduate from a Canadian Medical School.

The Women of the North-West Rebellion The first females to be recognized as part of a military force in the field.

TARA NICODEMO, May Buchanan in Farther West Ge n e rou s ly s u p p ort e d by

CREATIVE TEAM

FARTHER WEST

CAS T Akosua Amo-Adem Lily Reeves

Evan Buliung

Hanks

Dan Chameroy

Babcock

Jesse Aaron Dwyre

Ross

Kyra Harper

Violet Decarmin

Christine Horne

Nettie McDowell

Dan Lett

Seward

Matthew MacFadzean

Thomas Shepherd

Tara Nicodemo

May Buchanan

William Webster

Man in Bed

Jeff Lillico

Raglan

Production Diana Leblanc

Director

Astrid Janson

Set & Costume Designer

Graeme Thomson

Lighting Designer

Paul Humphrey

Sound Designer

Simon Fon

Fight Director

Krista Blackwood

Stage Manager

Susanne Lankin

Assistant Stage Manager

Diane Pitblado

Dialect Coach

Kelly McEvenue

Alexander Coach

Allyson McMackon

Movement Coach

Amanda Wong

Assistant Set Designer

Nick Andison

Assistant Lighting Designer

SOULPEPPER PRODUC T ION Jacqueline Robertson-Cull

Head of Hair & Makeup

Janet Pym

Barbara Nowakowski

Props Builder

Kaz Maxine

Mike Wharron, Lisa Summers

Wardrobe Coordinator

Millinery

Susan Dicks & Co., Geoff Hughes

Natalie Swiercz

Cutters

Greg Chambers

First Hand

Scenic Painters

Dresser

s p e c i a l t h a n k s: S a r a h A r m s t rong

Farther West is staged by arrangement with Ian Arnold, Catalyst TCM Inc. www.catalysttcm.com

i l l u s t r at ion : b r i a n r e a

BACKGROUND NOTES

J

ohn Murrell has spent his career celebrating women’s lives. With wit, tenderness and insight he’s explored the lives of maverick female artists like Sarah Bernhardt (Memoir), Eleonora Duse, Isadora Duncan (October), and Georgia O’Keeffe (The Faraway Nearby). He’s shown equal interest in the drama of so-called ordinary lives. He interviewed women in Calgary at their kitchen tables about their war experiences to create the five characters who keep the home fires burning in Waiting for the Parade. That play is not only his most produced work, it also earned him his first Chalmers Best Canadian Play Award, and was revived by Soulpepper in 2010.

His second Chalmers Award honoured a very different, more gritty work: Farther West.

Like Waiting for the Parade, it showcases women in a historical context. The main character May Buchanan was a real person, whose life Murrell researched from primary sources. At fourteen she became a whore. She was smart and clever, became a madam and she traveled across our country in the 1870s and 80s, seminal years for what was then the fledgling nation of Canada.

In those years Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont were fighting for Métis rights, underpaid Chinese labourers were building a railway through the treacherous Rockies (and losing one man per mile of track), and women were just beginning to be considered capable of practising medicine.

But Farther West is no dry history lesson or bald recitation of facts. In typical Murrell style, and with a bracing, operatic brio, this hardhitting story is grounded in fact and juiced by creative license.

Feisty May has a sense of individuality that does not fit into the small (and small-minded) place she comes from, so she heeds her father’s injunction to go “farther west”. Out there, on the lam from suffocating morality and conventional wisdom, she fights valiantly to create a passionate, authentic life for herself in a “God-forsaken place where there’s no rules, no laws, no judges”. Given that the play’s subtitle is A Romance*, it’s fitting that two men pursue her. Shepard loves her, adores her, is obsessed with her. He wants to marry her and settle

*though perhaps, with more than a hint of irony.

down – a difficult proposition for May, who values personal freedom and self-determination above all. Seward on the other hand is spiritually appalled by May’s lifestyle and physically drawn to her at the same time. In this powerful tale of one person’s search for a place to be herself, Murrell deftly juxtaposes male laws and female identity and explores an idea of the west.

There are many rollicking stories of the American West, like Sam Shepard’s True West from earlier this year. It’s pleasing that in the same season we can relish a yarn from our own Wild West, with a flawed, fascinating woman at its centre.•

Aut hor Biograph y John Murrell was born in Texas in 1945 and came to Canada in 1969. His second play Power in the Blood, won the Clifford E. Lee Award and propelled him to a position as Playwright-inResidence at Alberta Theatre Projects in Calgary.

In 1977 his most well known play, Waiting for the Parade, premiered at the Canmore Opera House. It was an instant hit, produced around the country, and staged in London and New York. His play Memoir, about the final days of Sarah Bernhardt, appeared later the same year.

It subsequently toured the USA, South America and Japan and ran for more than three years in Paris. In 1982 Farther West premiered in Calgary, directed by Robin Phillips and starring Martha Henry. Murrell’s plays have been translated into 15 languages and performed in more than 30 countries. In 2003 he became an Officer of the Order of Canada and created his first libretto, beginning a fruitful collaboration with composer John Estacio. They have 3 operas to their credit: Filumena, Frobisher (both premiered by the Calgary Opera and the Banff Centre) and Lillian Alling.

In 2008 he was honoured with the Governor General’s Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award.

He continues to be a potent cultural force as a playwright, arts advocate, mentor, translator and teacher.•

Tidbits and Background Notes by Paula Wing

THANK YOU FOR AT TENDING!

416 866 8666 soulpepper.ca Young Centre for the Performing Arts Toronto Distillery Historic District

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. •

Do stay in touch, and please pass the pepper!

SOULPEPPER THANKS

FOR THEIR GENEROUS SUPPORT OF

FARTHER WEST • •