PL AYBILL
La Ronde arthur schnitzler, adapted by jason sherman ( germany 1920 / canada 2013 )
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This performance of La Ronde contains: Explicit Sexual Content, Nudity, Gunshots, Violence, & Coarse Language a pproxim at e ru n ni ng t im e: 2 hou rs a nd 30 m i nu t es t h er e w ill be one 20 m i nu t e i n t er m ission
ARTIST NOTE: Alan Dilworth “ We are all wonderful, beautiful wrecks. That’s what connects us – that we're all broken, all beautifully imperfect” – Emilio Estevez I could not be more proud to share Jason Sherman’s adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde with you. For me, one of the thrills of an adaptation is experiencing the time-and-space defying magic of one writer’s vision enmeshed in another’s. A production of an adaptation answers the question: ‘why this play now?’ by telling us both something about who we were, and who we are now. Sherman’s deft and incisive script challenged our cast and creative team to ask these questions of ourselves and offer our findings to you. Our process has been an excavation of this heartbreaking and humorous meditation on the loneliness of the human condition. I hope somewhere in the world that we have created, you see a piece of yourself.
A MESSAGE FROM THE ARTISTIC DIRECTOR Dear Friends, Like Alan, I am thrilled to have Jason Sherman writing again for the theatre after more than a decade away. His is one of the most sophisticated and courageous dramatic voices that this country has ever produced, and this arresting adaptation announces a full-blooded return to the theatre. Thank you Jason. And thank you Alan for guiding this gifted team of designers and this fearless team of actors through a journey that visits dark and dangerous corners of the human experience. I asked Jason and Alan for a new version of La Ronde that would capture the provocative and searching nature of the original, and they, with this extraordinarily brave team of actors, have delivered in spades.•
Thank you for coming to the theatre.• “ Remember, we’re all in this alone” – Lily Tomlin
Alan Dilworth, Director of La Ronde
Albert Schultz, Artistic Director
LA RONDE
CREATIVE TEAM
cast Maev Beaty
Isobel
Leah Doz
Sonja / Drunk Girl
Miranda Edwards
Hannibelle
Stuart Hughes
Brandon McGibbon
Charlie
Lucas / Peacekeeper
Grace Lynn Kung
Adrian Morningstar
Zoe
Paul Sun-Hyung Lee
Robert / Peacekeeper
Mike Ross
Teddy / Peacekeeper
Nicholas
Brenda Robins
Eve
production Alan Dilworth
Thomas Ryder Payne
Lorenzo Savoini
Arwen MacDonell
Director
Set, Costume & Video Designer
Kimberly Purtell
Lighting Designer
Sound Designer Stage Manager
AJ Laflamme
ssistant A S tage Manager
Jessica Severin
Diane Pitblado
Rehearsal Stage Manager
Dialect Coach
Andrea Nann
Alexander Coach
Simon Fon
Video Production Assistant
Movement Coach Fight Director
Kelly McEvenue Nathan Kelly
SOULPEPPER PRODUC T ION Jacqueline Robertson Cull
Janet Pym
Geoff Hughes
Wardrobe Coordinator & Dresser
Head of Hair & Makeup Cutter
Sewer
Natalie Swiercz
Barbara Nowakowski
First Hand
Greg Chambers
Props Builder
Paul Boddum
Painter
Mike Keays
Carpenter
Daniela Mazic
Scenic Painter
s p e c i a l t h a n k s: M a r-ly n l u m b e r .
La Ronde is produced by arrangement with Kensington Literary Representation, 34 St. Andrew Street, Toronto, ON Canada, M5T 1K9, kensingtonlit@rogers.com.
i l l u s t r at ion : b r i a n r e a
BACKGROUND NOTES
I have gained the impression that you have learned through intuition… sensitive introspection – everything that I have had to unearth by laborious work on other persons. – Sigmund Freud in a letter to Arthur Schnitzler
L
a Ronde is Arthur Schnitzler’s theatrical jewel, his most enduring and popular work. It’s been translated into many languages and adapted countless times. Written before the turn of the 20th century, the playwright considered its content so inflammatory he only circulated the script among his friends. It took nearly ten years for the play to be published and it sold more than 40,000 copies before it was banned for salacious content. La Ronde wasn’t even staged until 1920, and then it premiered in Berlin, not the writer’s native Austria.
The response was explosive: critics called it filth. Performances after opening sparked riots. Sensibilities were so inflamed, the “perpetrators” were charged with immorality. The resulting obscenity trial heaped particular revulsion on the Jewish playwright. The court transcript reads: “For the defence it is important to state that this trial is indeed not a battle against Reigen (the play’s German title)… Reigen was only used in order to bring about an anti-Semitic action.” Everyone was acquitted but Schnitzler had had enough: he withdrew the play from production in Germanspeaking countries, a ban that was not lifted until 50 years after his death. Truthfully, it’s a little hard to understand the furor now, though La Ronde’s insights into male-female relations still have the ring of truth. Schnitzler was fascinated by the psychology of intimacy and no less an expert than Freud himself admired his understanding of how love, sex, and hate intersect. Mind you, Freud’s feeling that the playwright relied on intuition and introspection was wildly wrong. Schnitzler drew on a vast catalogue of personal experience. In his diary – an epic, passionately detailed account of his numerous affairs – he once expressed a wish for his own harem. Clearly, he did plenty of “laborious work on other persons” himself. Soulpepper has commissioned a new adaptation for this production from Jason Sherman, one of our most vivid, collaborative and original writers.
His electric version eschews the tame, look-atwhat-they-thought-of sex-back-then faithfulness common to adaptations of this play and aims straight for the jugular. Sherman’s La Ronde roots us fearlessly in the smorgasbord of sexuality in Toronto, now. Riots are unlikely to break out, but this is a La Ronde that will provoke strong reactions. It’s frank and funny, stimulating, brave, provocative, tender, raw and never, never tame. Prepare to be challenged. Prepare to be unsettled. Prepare for a bracing evening.•
Arthur Schnit zler Biography A rthur Schnitzler was born in Vienna in 1862 during the Austro-Hungarian Empire and died in the early ‘30s. The son of a prominent throat doctor, and later a practicing physician himself, he lived in Vienna his entire life, mining the city's demi-monde for his material. He is best known today for La Ronde but his writings include plays, novels, stories, and even a couple of medical tracts. He suffered from the antiSemitism that was on the rise in Austria in his lifetime, which touched him even after death: his work was among the first to be burned by the Nazis. La Ronde was not performed in German from 1921 until 1982, when his son Heinrich finally released the German language rights.•
Jason Sherman Biography Exactly a hundred years after Schnitzler’s birth, Jason Sherman was born in Montréal. A graduate of York University, his breakout play was The League of Nathans in 1992, which went on to many productions as well as Chalmers Canadian Play and Canadian Authors Awards. From 1992 to 1999, he was a writer-in-residence at the Tarragon Theatre. He has written for film (his screenplay adaptation of his play Two in the Back, One in the Head won a Governor General’s Literary Award), television (Cover Me, Hoop Life, ReGenesis) and radio (the series National Affairs and Afghanada). Jason Sherman lives in Toronto.•
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. •
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