Alumnae Theatre Company Announces NEW IDEAS FESTIVAL

Alumnae Theatre Company's 30th annual New Ideas Festival, a three-week, juried celebration of original writing and works-in-progress, takes place from March 7 to 25 in Alumnae's Studio Theatre (70 Berkeley St at Adelaide).

This year's festival of 15 new plays promises to be an exciting and eclectic mix, with both established and emerging theatre artists among the over 100 participants. The festival acts as a theatrical lab for writers, directors, and actors to practice and refine their art with the help of a live audience, who are invited to be part of the process by giving both spoken and written feedback following the shows.

As one playwright put it: "Being able to hear what the audience is responding to really does make all the difference to the play's final draft."

New Ideas Festival was founded in the late 1980s by Molly Thom and Kerri MacDonald "to develop new talent and new theatrical ideas." Many practicing artists over the years have participated in the festival, including Florence Gibson, Dave Carley, Emil Sher, Mark Brownell, Sue Minor, Shirley Barrie, Jordan Hall, Norman Yeung, Erin Shields, and Rose Napoli.

This year marks the festival's 30th anniversary. The festival's milestone is being celebrated as part of the Alumnae Theatre Company's 100th anniversary, making Alumnae the oldest continuously run theatre company in Toronto and the oldest women-run theatre company in North America.

THE SHOWS

Week 1:

• Rosemary Doyle, artistic director of Red Sandcastle Theatre and the Wilde Festival, puts on her playwright's hat to give us F*ck L*ve, an exploration of just how fragile the search for happiness can be. Directed by Brittany Miranda.

• Award-winning Hamilton playwright Andrew Lee, whose plays focus largely on reconstructing memory and how it is represented, returns to the festival for the third time with The Dancing Man of Macklin Street. Directed by Cassidy Sadler.

• Stephen Near, founder and playwright-in-resident of Hamilton's Same Boat Theatre, explores complex issues surrounding the teacher/student relationship in Governing Ourselves. Directed by Lori Delorme.

• University of Toronto assistant professor and author Vicki Zhang, whose essays and short fiction evoke the experience of the Chinese diaspora, confronts the legacy of the Tiananmen massacre in Oracle Jane when her Chinese-Canadian character returns home to Beijing. Directed by Donald Molnar.

Week 2:

• Sweet Mama and the Salty Muffins, by Kitchener poet and playwright Ciarán Myers, presents the story of a mother who insists the powerful music of a bluegrass band caused her toddler's mysterious long-ago disappearance. Directed by Kendra Jones.

• Set in 1930, Toronto poet Donna Langevin's If Socrates Were in My Shoes gives a fictionalized account of two early twentieth-century daredevils who risked their lives going over the Horseshoe Falls in Niagara. Directed by Carl Jackson.

• D.J. Sylvis, founding member and playwright-in-residence of Monkeyman Productions, paints a whimsical picture of long-distance love in Stars. Directed by Gillian Armstrong.

• Veteran playwright Elmar Maripuu explores the conflict between loyalty and ambition in Moving On, in which a small town Northern Ontario boy on the verge of success in big city Toronto must choose between his past life and love and the opportunity of a lifetime. Directed by Helly Chester.

Week 3:

• Delving into the dark and unexpected stories that once happened right here in our own city, Toronto playwright and educator Natalie Frijia returns to the festival again this year with The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, a true horror story inspired (and thoroughly exaggerated) by Toronto's very own sea serpent. Directed by Kay Brattan.

• Southern Ontario playwright and University of Western Ontario student Camille Intson gives us Marty and Joel and the Edge of Chaos, in which two estranged lovers learn to navigate love and fate in broken time and space. Directed by Lorna Craig.

• In Hamilton playwright Francesca Brugnano's play The Officiant, two naïve young lovers meet on a moonlit night in 1938 to secretly marry - but they are not prepared for the dramatic revelation of what their vows really mean. Directed by Paige Foskett.

• Playwright Chloë Whitehorn, whose work often examines taboo moralities, tragic love, and the licentious desires and imaginative reason of human beings, explores the complex relationships in a family running from a tragedy they don't want to face in Mourning After the Night Before. Directed by Heather Keith.

THE READINGS

March 10: In his play Watch Me Drown, Edmonton playwright Liam Salmon, currently a third year playwriting student at the National Theatre School of Canada, explores the provocative role of art when an emerging artist unveils his controversial painting at a local art gallery, forcing his former high school friends to confront their uneasy past. Directed by Evelyn Long.

March 17: Set in 1913 and based on the journals of English archaeologist Gertrude Bell, Mirage: The Arabian Adventures of Gertrude Bell by Ottawa playwright Laurie Fyffe, artistic director of Evolution Theatre, tells the story of an extraordinary woman who played a decisive role in the future of Mesopotamia at the turn of the twentieth century, with lasting repercussions for the Middle East today. Directed by Mona Zaidi.

March 24: Toronto screenwriter and playwright Romeo Ciolfi, artistic director of Studio Speranzo, ventures into the complex world of mental illness in Animal, in which a woman's mental crisis after a recent tragedy gives rise to a number of searing revelations that rock her fragmented family to the breaking point. Directed by Liz Best. (*Liz Best appears with the permission of Canadian Actors' Equity Association.)

NEW IDEAS FESTIVAL - March 7-25, 2018. Alumnae Theatre Studio, 70 Berkeley Street (at Adelaide). Showtimes: Wednesday to Saturday 8 pm; Saturday & Sunday matinees 2:30 pm. Saturday readings at noon (March 10, 17, and 24). Talkbacks after the Saturday matinees and readings. Tickets: Shows $15; Readings PWYC at the door ($10 suggested minimum). Buy online at www.alumnaetheatre.com or at the door (cash only). Note: the Studio is a third floor walk-up

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