Home david storey artist note: Brenda Robins Home n. [ hohm ]: • The place of one’s dwelling and nurturing, with its associations • A place where one’s affections centre, or where one finds rest, refuge or satisfaction If I hadn’t become an actor I would have liked to have been a forensic scientist. Happily there are times when the two professions intersect. Home might seem simple enough. As far as action goes, not a lot happens. This is when an actor’s exploratory work can get interesting. We have to search the text extra-carefully for hidden clues. Answers can be found in something as obscure as the placement of a semi-colon or the… at the end of a line. It can be quite painstaking work but very satisfying for a wannabe CSI agent. In a play such as this where the plot is, let’s say, nonexistent, where do you look? As with a Beckett play or an episode of Seinfeld, the heart of the piece lies in the relationships between characters. After all the textual nitpicking, you have to hope that you are working with a group of people with whom you can develop rich and convincing connections. Here the work gets a lot easier. Andre is a new acquaintance. The others in the cast and Albert, our director, I have known for at least 20 years. Not only that, but they are my friends and I like them. In fact I would go so far as to say they are like family to me and this company where we work is a little like a second home. Home. The case rests here. I found another definition of home that I like: Accessible to visitors. A formula inviting company I hope that we are successful in revealing this version of Home to you. Welcome to it.
Brenda Robins, Kathleen in Home
a message from the artistic director I have been thinking a great deal lately about the notion of home. When I was a child I was very lucky to have a place where many families came together to share their summers. This place became not only the landscape of my childhood but the foundation of my aspirations. This place had been in my family for several generations (since my family’s arrival in this country) and was, more than anywhere in the world, the place where I felt I belonged. It was also a place where hundreds of others felt welcome and at home. Such was the magic of that place. Ten years before we started Soulpepper my parent’s generation decided to get rid of that place and I lost my sense of home. Only recently it occurred to me that all of the effort and passion that I have put into Soulpepper and the Young Centre are an attempt to recreate a place where I belong and where many others – including you – can feel at home. To have a family is a blessing and to have a second family is a great, great gift. The play that you will see tonight is about, among other things, what happens to us in the absence of family. For that reason it breaks my heart. I am glad that it also, in the hands of my good friends, makes me laugh until I have trouble breathing. Like Brenda Robins, I am extremely blessed to have this second family and it is my profound hope that you will find, tonight and always, a home here. Welcome.
Albert Schultz, Artistic Director