THE DANISH PLAY returns on February 22

**** "One of the strongest and most wrenching

pieces of theatre so far this season."

-Robert Crew, The Toronto Star

 

**** "Utterly compelling."

-Kate Taylor, Globe and Mail

 

**** "Easily one of the best plays of the year."

-Glenn Sumi, NOW Magazine

 

Returning to Toronto after a highly touted tour including a stunning engagement in Denmark!

 

The Danish Play

Written by Sonja Mills

Directed by Kelly Thornton

Starring Kate Hennig as Agnete Ottosen

with Christine Brubaker, Eric Goulem, Randi Helmers, Bruce Hunter,

Clare Preuss and Clinton Walker

 

The Young Centre for the Performing Arts, February 22 – March 17, 2007

 

It is Christmas 1962 and Ottosen's recent death still haunts a group of her friends, fellow Resistance fighters, who meet seasonally to raise a glass of good cheer. Devised as a memory play, the piece then falls back in time to the 1940's in wartime Denmark, prior to invasion, then shifts to chronicle fierce occupation and resistance, then moves into concentration camps and finally leads us to a post-war Denmark that finds Ottosen's remarkable resistance has only led her towards an even darker ordeal at home. Epic in scope yet an intimate biography, The Danish Play is a powerful story of one woman's fight for the liberty of her country, all of its citizens and the struggle for her own personal freedom.

 

Playwright Sonja Mills comes by her fascination with this story naturally -- Agnete Ottosen (pronounced ow-nay-da) was her great aunt. After inheriting Ottosen's diaries from her mother, Mills spent considerable time translating the work, particularly the poems scrawled throughout the diaries. Mills has also traveled to Denmark several times to learn more about Ottosen's life. She interviewed other Resistance fighters and distant relations, and toured Padborg and Ravensbruck, two of the concentration camps that Ottosen survived.

 

Impassioned and heart-wrenching yet laden with dry Nordic wit, The Danish Play reflects upon the conflicts of nationalism, justice and freedom and the role of women in war; all relevant in our own time where the world once again careens towards an uncertain political future where an unjust war is front and centre on everyone's minds.

 

The Danish Play returns to Toronto after a highly successful tour with stops in Copenhagen, Edmonton at the Magnetic North Festival and at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. Nightwood Theatre originally produced The Danish Play in Toronto in 2002 where it received overwhelming audience and critical acclaim and was nominated for two Dora Awards including Outstanding Production.  The play has met with similar excitement wherever it has presented.  In Denmark one critic referred to it as a "Danish-Canadian declaration of peace."

 

Featuring Kate Hennig in the role of Agnete Ottosen, The Danish Play brings together some of Toronto's finest theatre artists including actors Christine Brubaker, Eric Goulem, Randi Helmers, Bruce Hunter, Clare Preuss and Clinton Walker and a design team composed of some of Toronto's most talented women; set designer Robin Fisher, costume designer Joanne Dente, lighting designer Rebecca Picherack, sound designer Angela Da Rocha and stage manager Melissa Rood.

 

Selected Bios:

Sonja Mills has written over a dozen plays including The Danish Play. She began her playwriting career in 1994 with a quirky little comedy called Dyke City.  That little play spawned a sequel and then another…The Dyke City series was both critically-acclaimed and wildly popular achieving cult-hit status during its 6-year, 10-episode run (Buddies In Bad Times Theatre). Sonja just finished a workshop of Postmortem, a little urban number about the human dynamics and dramas we embroil ourselves in. For two seasons, she has been Nightwood's Playwright-in-Residence writing Oil Man, a play about the end of the world as we know it. She is also a Chalmers Fellow, conducting research for Hans Island, a play about how global warming is turning Canada's north into a war zone. Sonja won the K.M. Hunter Artist's Award in 2006.

 

Making her long-awaited return to the Dora Nominated role of Agnete Ottosen, Kate Hennig most recently played Leni Riefenstahl in The Blue Light and was nominated for Best Actress for a Betty Mitchell Award. She played Maureen in Beauty Queen of Leenane for Alberta Theatre Projects (ATP) and Sally Bowles for Theatre Calgary's Cabaret. Both performances were honoured with Betty Mitchell Awards.  Kate also won a Betty for her work in Cosi for ATP and was nominated for her performance in Berlin to Broadway for Theatre Calgary. Kate played the title role in Candida for Theatre Calgary, and Donny in The Cryptogram for Theatre Junction. Other highlights include her Dora Award-winning performance in Ratbag for Theatre Columbus/CanStage, three seasons at the Stratford Festival, two seasons with Theatre Plus Toronto, one season at the Shaw Festival and the title role in Hamlet for Theatre Laurier. Kate was nominated for a Genie Award for "32 Short Films About Glenn Gould," and was seen in the major film release "The Claim."

 

Kelly Thornton is an award-winning director and dramaturg. Since 2001, she has been the Artistic Director of Nightwood Theatre. Prior to this she worked in new play development as an assistant dramaturg at CanStage and Factory Theatre and at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre as Rhubarb! Festival Director, curating, for two seasons, the largest festival of new works in Canada. She has been directing for the stage for over ten years. Selected credits include Veronique Olmi's Mathilde, translated by Morwyn Brebner (Nightwood), The Comedy of Errors for CanStage's Dream in HighPark, The Danish Play and This Hotel (Theatre Passe Muraille/Planet 88 - six Dora Award nominations including Outstanding Direction). Other credits include the world premiere of China Doll (Nightwood, Governor General's Award finalist), Peep Show (Buddies), Finding Regina (Theatre Passe Muraille/Globe Theatre), Bear With Me (Nightwood/Buddies), Jekyll (Les Vaches), The Dumb Waiter (SummerWorks), Friedrich Durrenmatt's The Visit (Alumnae Director's Award). In 2003 Kelly was honoured with the prestigious Pauline McGibbon Award for her outstanding work as a director.

 

High resolution photography for The Danish Play is available for download at:

http://www.nightwoodtheatre.net/

 

The Danish Play Show Details   DATES:                      February 22 – March 17, 2007   MEDIA/VIP:             Saturday, February 24, 2007 at 8:00 p.m.   SHOW TIME:           Monday to Saturday at 8:00 p.m., Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. and Saturday                                                                                                                                                                                              matinees at 2:00 p.m.   TICKETS:                Matinees and Tuesday to Thursday $28 / Friday and Saturday evenings $32                             Previews $15, $10 buck Mondays (in person and cash only. Tickets go on sale                                                                                                                                                         at 7 pm), Students (under 21) $15, Seniors $20   LOCATION:            Young Centre for the Performing Arts, Distillery District, 55 Mill Street   BOX OFFICE:      Tickets are available in advance by calling the Young Centre Box Office at         416.866.8666 or at www.totix.ca

 

 

The Danish Play is produced by Nightwood Theatre – Artistic Director Kelly Thornton and Producer and General Manager Monica Esteves.

 

Nightwood Theatre was founded in 1979. For 27 years it has produced, developed and toured landmark, award-winning plays by and about women. The company's tremendous work in play creation bore fruit to many renowned and acclaimed plays that are now part of the Canadian theatre canon.  These include Good Night Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) by the now-famous playwright and novelist Ann-Marie MacDonald, Harlem Duet and The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God by Djanet Sears (later re-mounted with Mirvish Productions) and over 50 other new Canadian plays by women.  Nightwood plays have won Canada's highest literary and performing arts honours including Governor General, Chalmers, Dora Mavor Moore and Trillium Awards.

 

In addition, Nightwood initiated The Groundswell Festival, (now in its 24th year) which is a national play development program for new works by women.  In 2003, Nightwood co-founded Hysteria, an annual multi-disciplinary festival of women's work with Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. The company launched Write from the Hip in 2000 – a youth training program for novice playwrights and Busting Out! in 2004 – a free summer program for teen girls ages 12-16.

 

Upcoming:

Nightwood Theatre will proudly present the professional Toronto premiere of the ground-breaking play Crave by Sarah Kane. It will be presented at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts in Toronto's Distillery District from April 26 to May 17, 2007. Award-winner Jennifer Tarver will direct this acclaimed work from one of Britain's most celebrated and visionary playwrights of the last decade.  Crave will star Carlos González-Vio, Michelle Monteith, Hardee Lineham and Maria Ricossa.

 

Crave presents four characters, or perhaps four aspects of human nature, set in an unnamed city. Two men and two women, each only having a letter for a name, are linked through various relationships. The ferocity of craving someone, or something, is palpable. Kane paints four portraits of the turbulence of the human heart as these four individuals negotiate the pressures of love, loss and desire.

 

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