Seventh Stage Theatre Productions

Read what NOW Magazine has to say about The Red Queen Effect!

This ensemble-crafted comic critique of corporate life and structure follows recent MBC grad Alice (Monica Dottor)  “down the rabbit hole” into the Kafkaesque world of Toronto finance. Its look at gender discrimination in the workplace (no one takes Alice seriously initially) cleverly points out social contradictions but might go further to expose the roots of these assumptions.

Many thanks for the NNNN’s!!

Photo Credit: Michelle Bailey, Nerdy Girl Designs

We are proud to receive 4 stars* from Christopher Hoile at Eye Weekly for our Next Stage production ‘The Red Queen Effect’ .

*out of a possible 5 stars

The Red Queen Effect fires back at corporate culture
JOHN KEILLOR
METRO CANADA
January 06, 2010 5:00 a.m.
The Red Queen Effect is a brand new production that explores the corporate culture that shapes today’s economy. In it, Alice steps through a mirror of normal life and into a psychotic Wonderland, a financial corporation that’s full of glass ceilings for women and grotesque games are played with client cash.
As Nicholas Campbell (Da Vinci’s Inquest) explains, it’s a very different world from his, or ours, and the ridiculous bits are perfect for generating laughs.
“This production finds ways to be funny about the business world, which is important if you want to send a message,” says Campbell by phone. “To deal with serious issues, it’s good to be funny.”
The title of the play refers to the Red Queen from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass from 1871. In that famous novella, the Red Queen explains to Alice that to run is to stay in one place. To get anywhere else, you have to run twice as fast.
According to Campbell, corporate life really is like that, especially for women.

Nick has more to say, take a look and see…

Photo Credit: Michelle Bailey, Nerdy Girl Designs

Q & A: Kelly Straughan

DIRECTOR, THE RED QUEEN EFFECT
BY JON KAPLAN

Words alone aren’t enough for director Kelly Straughan. She needs moving bodies to give life to a play.

Straughan made a splash in the Fringe with Timebomb, which used a physical chorus to comment on the story of a woman facing a quarter-life crisis.

Now she’s tackling her first collaborative work, a production for the Next Stage Festival called The Red Queen Effect. The show uses Alice Through The Looking Glass to explore a corporation in which employees jockey for power.

“I realize that movement-based theatre excites me as a director,” says Straughan, the Tarragon’s assistant artistic director. “Combining text and movement seems to me the best way to communicate.”

To read the rest of the interview visit NOW Magazine here.

Seventh Stage Theatre Productions – Anthony Minghella’s Whale Music
by Paula Citron
Anthony Minghella is best know as an Oscar-winning British film director/writer, but he began as a playwright. A new collective of women is mounting Minghella’s 1981 Whale Music. The play certainly has six plum roles for women and director Rosemary Dunsmore has made the best of their considerable talent.
The surprise about Whale Music is that it is written by a man because it is a very intimate play about the conversations and relationships that women have.
The action is set on the Isle of Wight were the unmarried and pregnant Caroline has come to have the baby she is giving up for adoption. Rallying around her are her free-thinking flat mate, her unhappily-married childhood friend, her Lesbian former teacher, the teacher’s teenage lover, and Caroline’s mother. Every one of the women has her own issues, as well as having strong feelings about Caroline’s predicament.
The result is a sweet and affecting play.
Whale Music continues until May 20.
From the Tarragon Extra Space I’m Paula Citron, arts reviewer for CLASSICAL 96.3 FM.

Photo Credit: Natalie Kauffman, Brown Eyed Girl

THEATRE IS TERRITORY: 10 Questions

1) What the fuck is going on?
Gawd knows! But if someone figures it out, please fill me in.

2) Do you think our culture perpetuates a false dichotomy between art and entertainment?
First, yes it is a false dichotomy. And secondly, I think every kind of art can be entertaining depending on the palate of the viewer, at least as far as my definition of entertainment goes.

This one is long-winded, but you have the time take a peek here.

Mixed Music
BY DEBBIE FEIN-GOLDBACH

In 1981 England, when new wave music topped the charts and Lady-turned-Princess Di still blushed, Anthony Minghella hadn’t yet penned his famous films. He was busy writing Whale Music, a play that explores motherhood and female friendships and includes six deliciously witty roles for women.

It centres around young, single and pregnant Caroline (Mika Collins), who moves to the coast and lives with Stella (Melissa-Jane Shaw), a reclusive artist with a secret past. In the course of the play, Caroline’s alienated mom (Jane Moffat), her childhood friend Fran (Rosa Laborde), her ex-lover/teacher, Kate (Katherine East), and Kate’s friend D (Sascha Cole) unite to support her.

Candid girl talk, gleeful chatter and heartfelt exchanges pervade the script, and some of the actors make the most of this. We feel the acerbic Stella’s ache for love. Laborde’s Fran is so genuine she could be your best friend. And Cole, despite being born in 1984, totally brings the post-punk teen mentality to life.

Read the rest of what NOW had to say about Whale Music…

Photo Credit: Natalie Kauffman, Brown Eyed Girl

The proverb says that it takes a village to raise a child, but Melissa-Jane Shaw has a new corollary to that statement: “It takes 50 women to put on a play.”

That’s how many female colleagues Shaw has enlisted in one form or another to work on Whale Music, which opens Saturday night at the Tarragon Theatre Extra Space.

It’s the initial stage work being presented by Seventh Stage Productions, described as “a Toronto-based production company run by a group of young women with a unique multi-faceted approach to creating and presenting all forms of entertainment.”

Actor-choreographer Shaw united with director Kelly Straughan and actor-playwright Rosa Laborde (Leo) to form a company that Shaw said “could give the women of today an environment in which they felt empowered to create.”

In addition to the upcoming production of Whale Music, they also have three films in development, and Straughan is curating a series called Whale Riders, made up of original short works by female artists, with a different one to be presented before each performance of the play…

To get the full scoop click here for the full article.