Factory to Present AGE OF AROUSAL - Stripped Naked

Friendship, romance, sex and suffrage - AGE OF AROUSAL written by Linda Griffiths and directed by Jennifer Brewin, will launch Factory's Naked Season 2015/16. Stripped down to the most fundamental and striking elements, the Naked Season is a series of pure encounters between the audience, the actors, and the text.

"The NAKED SEASON offers us the chance to revisit classic Canadian works: probe them, interrogate them, and become intimately reacquainted with them." Nina Lee Aquino, Artistic Director, Factory

In 1880s London, in the midst of social and political unrest, Mary Barfoot runs a secretarial school with her lover Rhoda. When spinster sisters and a charismatic man arrive, politics and passion erupt forcing each character to confront their repressed sexual desire and identity. Linda Griffiths' lush genre-busting portrayal of feminine virtue versus feminism at the time of Victorian Suffrage, speaks to the continued struggle of equality for women in the 21st century. Jennifer Brewin directs the late great feminist playwright's sexy, liberating and intelligent AGE OF AROUSAL.

AGE OF AROUSAL, which received its world premiere in February 2007 at Alberta Theatre Projects' playRites Festival, was honoured with the Betty Mitchell Award for Outstanding New Play, and was published by Coach House Press that same year. Nightwood Theatre produced the Toronto premiere in November 2007, with the US premiere in Philadelphia immediately following. All three productions were co-produced with Linda Griffiths' company, Duchess Productions.

Silenced too soon, Linda Griffiths (1953-2014) was one of the most vital theatrical voices in Canadian theatre. Griffiths reached international fame with her production of Maggie and Pierre, a one-woman show in which she played former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, his wife Maggie, and a reporter. Griffiths has received five Dora Mavor Moore Awards, winning Outstanding New Play four times for: Maggie and Pierre, O.D. in Paradise, Jessica and Alien Creature. She was also a two-time winner of the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award for Jessica and Alien Creature, and two-time nominee for the Governor General's Award for English-Language Drama for The Darling Family and Alien Creature.

"Griffiths is one of Canada's 'originals' known not only for the quality of her work, but for the sheer range of her career." Maclean's Magazine

Director Jennifer Brewin (Artistic Director Common Boots/Theatre Columbus) is a multi-award-winning artist who specializes in the creation and development of new work. She has created new plays for British Columbia's Caravan Farm Theatre, the National Arts Centre English Theatre in collaboration with Ottawa's Experimental Farm, and Toronto's Evergreen Brick Works; and has directed premieres of works by Martha Ross, Haley McGee, Natasha Greenblatt, Martin Julien, Colin Heath, Sean Dixon and Michele Riml. She has co-authored and directed a number of collective creations including, The Public Servant (Theatre Columbus/GCTC), A Night in the Woods (Caravan Farm Theatre), The Great Frost of 1608 (with Peter Hinton/National Arts Centre) and The Attic, The Pearls and Three Fine Girls (Theatre Columbus). Jennifer's work has been recognized with a Jesse Richardson Award, a Dora Mavor Moore Award, a Harold Award, and an Armstrong Award of Excellence in recognition of the Caravan Farm Theatre's outstanding contribution to its community.

"Naked embraces the game of performance and relies upon the raw impulses to animate meaning." Jennifer Brewin

AGE OF AROUSAL features: Aviva Armour-Ostroff actor, director, writer, producer and founder and artistic director of the Lab Cab Festival and recent winner of the Patrick Conner Award, as Virginia Madden; Marie Beath Badian actor, director, dramaturge and playwright of Prairie Nurse (Blythe Festival) and The Making of Jerome (Next Stage Theatre Festival), as Rhoda Nunn; Leah Doz, award-winning actor who has appeared with Soulpepper Theatre (Rosencrantz & Gildenstern Are Dead, La Ronde, and Great Expectations) and Stratford Festival (The Matchmaker, Much Ado About Nothing), as Monica Madden; Sam Kalilieh (Everard Barfoot), actor, comedian and voice artist who appeared in Convergence Theatre's Passion Play and can currently be seen on the CBC TV comedy Fool Canada, as Everard Barfoot; Juno Rinaldi actor and playwright whose new play, Stationary, co-written with her husband will premiere at Theatre Aquarius in 2016, as Alice Madden; and Julie Stewart, who starred for seven seasons as Sgt. Ali McCormick on the TV drama Cold Squad, as Mary Barfoot.

AGE OF AROUSAL is presented as part of a seasonette that also includes: BANANA BOYS, written by Leon Aureus, adapted from the novel by Terry Woo, directed by Nina Lee Aquino, November 3 - 22 in the Studio Theatre; and BOMBAY BLACK written by Anosh Irani, directed by Peter Hinton November 17 - December 6, 2015 in the Mainspace Theatre.

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