playWrighT’s noTes (2020)
1. I want to use and subvert the tropes of the one-person confessional play.
2. I want to use and subvert the tropes of cabaret/ nightclub/concert hall performance.
3. I want to communicate the feelings and personal events about being Queer in the mid – to late-20th century.
4. I want to use songs from the musical and popular canon that Judy might have sung.
5. I want the songs to have emotional and dramatic resonance in terms of theme and narrative.
6. I want to express what AIDS ‘did’ to our family.
7. I want to express what musicals ‘did’ for my dad and me.
8. I want to explore the danger, sentiment, and fungibility of memory.
9. I want to interrogate how the secrets and lies of ‘being queer’ affected and worked in our family.
10. I want to show, dramatically, how subjective ‘doubleness’ leads to ‘performance’.
11. I want to explore how I am – and am not – Queer.
12. I want people to laugh and cry: public emotion, shared.
— Martin Julien
In the early 1980’s, Martin Julien and I were classmates at theatre-school. Little could I imagine then, that 40 years on, we would be creating a show, largely inspired by this wild and uncertain time of our youth. So many days in rehearsal we are left to describe a time, distant and unrecognizable to another generation – whose power and insight demands we understand it anew. We challenge and teach each other in the exchange. I take inspiration from making something today that was unimaginable to me at an earlier time of life. I stand in the beauty knowing that perhaps 40 years from now, the younger artists of our show, will be making theatre and perhaps describing our present time to their own collaborators who are not yet born.
While rehearsing and creating THE MAN THAT GOT AWAY there were always the Queer elders who haunted, guided and mentored me towards the work; Jack McAllister for one, and Larry Lillo always. And there are the Queer collaborators of a younger generation that teach me where this work lands and make mentorship a succession in the most powerful sense; Will Dao specifically and Germaine Konji in a big way.
This work is born out of many lives and every member of the creative team; the actors, designers, stage manager and production team have witnessed and shaped its iteration. Theatre is like that, singular acts of expression collectively and reluctantly born.
Thanks, Martin, for sharing your story. To share your family for the theatre, is not to aggrandize oneself but to offer it up, tenderly, for each of us to see our own.
direCTor’s noTe
This is a glossary of words and practice which were the foundation of my director’s notes. To lead everyone through the darkness, towards the liberation.
FRANTUMAGLIA; Queer author Elena Ferrante titled her collection of reflections on the writer’s process, and describes it like this; “Bits and pieces, whose origin is difficult to pinpoint, and which make a noise in your head, sometimes causing discomfort. The frantumaglia is the part of us that escapes any reduction to words, and that in moments of crisis dissolves the entire order within, which it seemed to us we were stably inserted. Every interior state is ultimately, a magma that clashes with self control, and it’s that magma we have to try to describe, if we want the words to have energy.”
KINTSUGI; In pottery, Kintsugi is the general concept of highlighting or emphasizing imperfections, visualizing mends and seams in the pot as an area to celebrate or focus on, rather than absence or missing pieces.
PENTIMENTO; A reappearance in a painting of an original drawn or painted element which was eventually painted over by the artist. Lillian Hellman titled her autobiography PENTIMENTO and described it in painting this way, “… it’s called pentimento because the painter ‘repented,’ changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again.”
PALIMPSEST; A manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain. PAMLIMPSEST was the title of Gore Vidal’s 1996 memoir.
— Peter Hinton-Davis
+ produCTion Team Martin Julien // playwright + performer Peter Hinton-Davis // director Stephen Woodjetts // musical arrangements + consultation Tat Austrie + Ben Page // performers Monice Peter // assistant director + dramaturge Fiona Jones // stage manager Sean Mulcahy // set + costume design Bonnie Beecher // lighting design HAUI // video design Wayne Hawthorne // sound design Rebecca Vandevelde // production manager Conrad McLaren // technical director Amber Pattison // head technician Diamond Srey // Qlab progammer Rachel Shaen // assistant lighting designer* Avril Francis // head of wardrobe Sylvia Defend, Marianna Thomlison + Carole McDonald // sewers + cutters James McKernan, Scenery Farm // carpenter Laura Warren // projection consultation Beth Airton, Matt Armour, Samira Banihashemi, Theodore Belc, Pip Bradford, Luke Dobson, Mike Dowdall, Gus, Kit Norman, El Patey, Rachel Shaen, Diamond Srey, Katherine Teed-Arthur, Al Thomas-Hall, Carlos Varela, Van Ward // crew *The services of Rachel Shaen were made possible through the Associated Designers of Canada Assistant Designer Program funded by the Government of Canada.
CreaTive
MARTIN JULIEN PETER HINTON-DAVIS
TAT AUSTRIE
BEN PAgE
MONICE PETER FIONA JONES
SEAN MULCAHY
BONNIE BEECHER HAUI
WAYNE HAWTHORNE STEPHEN WOODJETTS
MARTIN JULIEN (he/him) // playwright + performer
Martin Julien has been a professional Canadian actor since the age of ten. Over time, he has also become a playwright, theatre deviser, lecturer, and scholar. Martin has been nominated for three Dora Mavor Moore Awards as Best Performer and was also highlighted as Toronto’s top-rated theatre artist of the year by NOW Magazine in 1995. He holds a Ph.D. from the Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies in the University of Toronto, where he was a SSHRC Doctoral Fellow (2015-2017). Martin was the senior editor of Theatre Passe Muraille: A Collective History, Playwrights Canada Press (2019), and his play The Unanswered Question premiered at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre in Artistic Director Peter Hinton-Davis’s inaugural season (2007). Recent acting credits include Under the Stairs by Reza Jacobs and Kevin Dyer, YPT (2019), and playing the titular role in Sir John A: A Gentrified Ojibway Rebellion by Drew Hayden Taylor, NAC (2017).
PETER HINTON-DAVIS (he/they) // director
Recent work includes; The Last Epistle of Tightrope Time by Walter Borden, Neptune Theatre; At the Beginning of Time by Steve Galluccio, Centaur Theatre; The Hooves Belonged to the Deer by Makram Ayache, Tarragon Theatre/Buddies; The Shadow of a Doubt by Edith Wharton, Shaw Festival; Hadrian by Daniel MacIvor and Rufus Wainwright, Canadian Opera Company, and their own play, The Sylvia Effect at Theatre Kingston. Peter has directed over 200 productions since 1984 of both premiere and public domain texts, their plays and adaptations have been staged at Stratford, Shaw, National Arts Centre and the Segal Centre. From 2005-2012, Peter was Artistic Director of English Theatre at Canada’s National Arts Centre. In 2009, they were made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
TAT AUSTRIE (they/she) // performer
Tat is an emerging performing artist based in the GTA. They are a graduate of Western University with a BMusA in voice, and most recently they appeared in Hamlet-911 at the Stratford Festival. Other selected theatre credits include: Finding Black Joy, Bunny in Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens, Lounge Singer in Dogfight, and New Wave Girl in Heathers.
Tat would like to thank her family and friends for all their love and support.
BEN PAGE (they/them) // performer
Ben Page is a non-binary theatre artist born and raised on the land colonially known as Toronto. Having worked primarily as a composer and musician since graduating from Sheridan College in 2020, their composition debut Leaving Eden (book and lyrics by Jenny Waxman) won best musical in the New York Musical Festival in 2019. In 2021, Ben workshopped a new musical with their frequent collaborator Germaine Konji called The Lobster Who Cried Person as part of Bad Hats’ New Bad Ideas festival. Ben strives to create work that centers the collective live experience inherent to theatre as an artform.
Selected performance credits include: Bear in Ursa: A Folk Musical (Tweed & Co), the Emcee in Cabaret (Theatre Sheridan), Doug in The Crack of Doom (Toronto Fringe), and Arlo in The Preposterous Predicament of Polly Peel (Toronto Fringe).
MONICE PETER (she/her) // assistant director + dramaturg
Monice Peter is a professional actress with over 14 years of stage and screen appearances. Most notably, she spent three seasons at The Stratford Festival and a season acting at The Shaw Festival where she worked on Sex by Mae West directed by Peter Hinton-Davis. Monice has also performed at The Grand Theatre in The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood, directed by Megan Follows and with Nightwood Theatre in Every Day She Rose by Andrea Scott and Nick Green codirected by Andrea Donaldson and Sedina Fiati. Monice recently returned from the US tour of Prince Hamlet with Why Not Theatre. Monice is a playwright-in-residence with Urban Ink Theatre Society working on her full length play Burnt Cork. Currently, Monice is studying Sustainable Business Leadership at BCIT. Monice is happy to be working alongside Peter and will forever be grateful for Martin and his treasure trunk of stories.
FIONA JONES (she/her) // stage manager
Selected credits: Bentboy (YPT); The Fool of Cavan, Crow Hill; The Telephone Play, Bombers: Reaping the Whirlwind, The Hero of Hunter Street, The Bad Luck Bank Robbers, Wounded Soldiers, Winslows of Derryvore and Queen Marie (4th Line Theatre); Scadding (Common Boots); What A Young Wife Ought To Know (2b Theatre/GCTC/Grand Theatre/Crow’s Theatre); Disgraced (Mirvish/Hope In Hell Theatre/ Citadel Theatre); Life, Death And The Blues, Such Creatures, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Beast on the Moon, and Sleeproom (Theatre Passe Muraille); Trudeau Stories (Long Black Car); el Retorno/I Return, Chile con Carne, The Intruder (Alameda Theatre); Bitter Girl (Marquis Entertainment); Banana Boys, Trout Stanley,
Cold Meat Party, Tiger of Malaya, Home is My Road, Belle and Life Sentences (Factory Theatre); An Acre of Time, The Road to Hell, The Wines of Tuscany, one word and The Retreat (Tarragon Theatre); Death of a Chief ( Native Earth); The Danish Play and Smudge (Nightwood Theatre).
SEAN MULCAHY (he/him) // set + costume
design
Sean is a Toronto-based Designer and Stylist whose work has been seen throughout Canada, the US, and Central America. Select companies include The Stratford Festival, Obsidian Theatre Co., Theatre Aquarius, Canadian Stage and Neptune Theatre. Awards include a Guthrie and The Tom Patterson Award (Stratford Festival); 7 Merritt Nominations, 3 Awarded (Theatre Nova Scotia); Best Group Costume Design (Pride Toronto); 2020 Laureate of the Virginia and Myrtle Cooper Award in Costume Design, (OAC/OAF). Sean is a graduate and MFA candidate of York University, and a member of the Associated Designers of Canada IATSE 659. Sean is also a Design instructor at Toronto Metropolitan University, Chang School for Continuing Education. Thanks to The Talent House for their continued encouragement and support. www.seanmulcahydesign.com
BONNIE
BEECHER (she/her)
// lighting design
Bonnie has designed over 400 productions for theatre, opera and dance across Canada and internationally. Recent productions include Jane Eyre (Citadel Theatre), I forgive you (Artistic Fraud), Just to get Married (Shaw Festival), Salt Baby (Theatre Aquarius), Grand Ghosts (Grand Theatre), and Krabat (Ballett Am Rhein, Dusseldorf). Upcoming productions include The Darkest Dark (YPT), Marie Stewart (Karlsruhe Ballet, Germany), and Giselle (Ballett Am Rhein Dusseldorf).
Bonnie lives in Toronto and has received 18 Dora nominations and has won the award twice.
HAUI
(dey/dem)
// video design
HAUI eschews categorization and has been dubbed a “renaissance polymath.” An award-winning mixed media artist HAUI directs (stage and screen), designs (video projections and visual arts), and devises (performs, playwrights/poetry, and produces) works in film, opera, theatre, and visual arts. An inaugural artist-in-residence with Wildseed Centre for Arts and Activism, HAUI has worked for Canada’s leading arts organizations, including CBC, APTN, Stratford Festival, Shaw Festival, Luminato Festival, Tarragon Theatre, Factory Theatre,
Black Theatre Workshop, Cahoots Theatre, Outside the March, GCTC in a variety of artistic roles. Career highlights include HAUI’s debut movie-manifesto MIXED↑ produced by Jack Fox and the world’s first LGBTQ+ television network OUTtv. HAUI was recently associate director for Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Choir Boy (Canadian Stage). Upcoming, HAUI will direct his operatic opus about Canadian singer Portia White produced by the Canadian Opera Company in association with the National Arts Creation Fund, Canada Council, and Ontario Arts Council.
WAYNE HAWTHORNE (he/him) // sound design
Wayne’s career in technical entertainment has spanned over 30 years. From theme park entertainment, touring concerts, duties as a “house” technician and venue installations, Wayne has had experience in many aspects of the industry. With a degree in Electrical Engineering and as a licensed Professional Engineer, Wayne has also been involved in the development of acoustic processing systems for the defense market. Merging these two careers led to the inception of Click Track Audio, a mobile production company that specializes in location recording, live-to-air broadcast, music mixing and theatrical sound design. In parallel with all this, Wayne has also spent the last decade as a professor in Algonquin College’s Music Industry Arts program in Ottawa. In this role Wayne uses his varied experience to help teach technical skills to the next generation of entertainment professionals.
STEPHEN WOODJETTS (he/him) // musical arrangements + consultation
Stephen has worked in Canadian theatre for fifty years, as music director, composer, actor and dancer. He is the recipient of 4 Betty Mitchell awards, a Dora Mavor Moore award, and three Guthrie awards.
our CommuniTy of donors
LEGACY CIRCLE
Ed Cabell & Roy Forrester
John Alan Lee
Russell Mathew & Scott Ferguson
Richard McLellan
Adam Morrison & James Owen Jim Robertson & Jim Scott
VISIONARIES ($5000+)
House of Beida Inc.
HEROES ($2500+)
Paul Butler & Chris Black
Gordon/Smith Charitable Giving Fund
Martha LA McCain
LEADERS ($1000+)
Altas Corporation
Lawrence Bennett
The Bulmash-Siegel Private Foundation
Entertainment Partners Canada Inc
Andrew Gillespie
Paul Hartwick
William Hodge & Robert Wylie
NIgE Gough Shine On Foundation
Elizabeth Pasternak & Alon Nashman
Brian Sambourne
Peter Taylor
ADVOCATES ($500+)
D. Arcand & A. Karmali
Kate Bishop & Doug Gerhart
Kelly Clipperton
Robert G. Coates
Philip Doiron
Dennis Findlay
The Charlie and Lulu Franklin Fund at the Calgary Foundation
Tucker Gordon George Grant Montana Kimel Richard McLellan
The Mehta Rahim Foundation Smokestack Studio
Lis Sparks James Tennyson Brian Terry Michael David Trent
Lucinda Wallace & Lesley Fraser
PARTNERS ($250+)
Mark Aikman & Gustavo
Cerquera Benjumea
Cole Alvis - in Honour of René Highway
Jason Aviss + Jordaan Mason
Neil Betteridge
Lawrence Campbell Russell Connelly Shawn Daudlin Emily Jean Derr Alan Dingle
Robin Gordon
Ken Harvey
Jaigris Hodson Dr. Ben Louie
Gilles Marchildon Aidan Morishita-Miki Pearse Murray
Oldfield Management Inc. Jackie “Ma” Raposo
Andrea Ridgley Dave Steinberg Richard Sutton Lionel Tona Allison Vanek
MONTHLY DONORS
Mark Aikman & Gustavo Cerquera Benjumea
Cole Alvis - in Honour of René Highway
Michel Beauvais Allen Braude Mark Brodsky
Russell Connelly
David Couture
Barbara Fingerote
Tucker Gordon Robin Gordon George Grant
Allen Hernandez
William Hodge & Robert Wylie Jaigris Hodson
Andrea Houston
Carlo Isola Justin Kennedy Tom Keogh & Paul McClure
Montana Kimel Kristina Lemieux Dr. Ben Louie
Jonathan MacArthur Cameron MacLeod Gilles Marchildon Paulie McDermid Richard McLellan Aidan Morishita-Miki Thompson Nguyen Rui Pires Ingrid Randoja
Susanna Reid
Andrea Ridgley Mitsuko Sada
Peter Taylor
Lionel Tona Ayse Turak
Allison Vanek Cathrin Winkelmann Herng Yi Cheng Arielle Zamora
Listed donations from Dec 1, 2021 - Nov 30, 2022
PHOTO OF DANIEL AND MAKAMBE K SIMAMBA BY DYLAN MITRO
an Ontario government agency un organisme du gouvernement
I HAVE NOT ALL THAT PUBLIC AGENCIES an Ontario government agency un organisme du gouvernement de l’Ontario
“WHAT I HAVE DONE IS NOT ALL THAT I AM.” PUBLIC AGENCIES CORPORATE PARTNERS TOURING PARTNER LEAD CORPORATE SPONSOR COMMUNITY AND EDUCATION PARTNER
PUBLIC AGENCIES
“WHAT
PHOTO OF DANIEL JELANI ELLIS MAKAMBE K SIMAMBA DYLAN MITRO
