AGE OF AROUSAL Opens at Canadian Shaw Festival Today, 8/13

Linda Griffiths' play 'Age of Arousal', directed by Jackie Maxwell, opens at the Canadian Shaw Festival's Court House Theatre on August 13. Previews for the play started on July 23. The play is booked until October 10.

It's 1885 in Age of Arousal, and in London there are half a million more women than men. Mary, an ex-suffragette, has opened a secretarial school for women to teach liberation through typing. When three sisters sign up, unexpected passions and secret desires are unleashed as they each learn what being a New Woman can truly mean. A contemporary look at the Shaw Festival mandate by an award-winning writer.

Griffiths describes Age of Arousal as "wildly inspired" by The Odd Women, by George Gissing. George Orwell called the novel "one of the best in English," and it has also been called the most important novel published in Britain in the 1890s for its portrayal of 'odd' or 'unpaired' women. As Gissing describes them, "odd in the sense that they do not make a match as we say 'an odd glove.'" When Griffiths found Gissing's novel, it prompted her to undertake an investigation of the women's suffrage movement that she'd long put off. "These are my philosophical ancestors," Griffiths said. "I always wanted to know more about them but was too lazy to find out more until I found a battered paperback in a second-hand bookstore and bought it for a dollar."

The play is recommended for audiences over 16 years old. Tickets range from $33.90 - $89.27. For more information about the play and to buy tickets, visit www.shawfest.com.

Linda Griffiths has been called "one of Canada's originals" and as an actor and playwright she has tackled a range of subjects and roles including playing both Margaret and Pierre Trudeau in her play Maggie & Pierre, poet Gwendolyn MacEwan in Alien Creature and Wallis Simpson in The Duchess. Age of Arousal has played across Canada and won the Betty Mitchell Award for Best New Play in 2007. Our production, directed by Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell, features Donna Belleville as Mary Barfoot, Jenny Young as Rhoda Nunn, with Sharry Flett, Kelli Fox, Gray Powell and newcomer Zarrin Darnell-Martin.

In the Spirit of George Bernard Shaw, the Shaw Festival provokes the mind and stirs the soul through a theatre experience so compelling that, year after year, ever broadening groups of artists, audiences and supporters are drawn to our work in Niagara-on-the-Lake and beyond.

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