Celebrating Our 2018/19 Season Launch!

Resistance, Resettlement and Reconciliation – oh my! You’re invited to celebrate another incredible season of Winnipeg theatre! As part of First Fridays, Sarasvàti Productions will be hosting our annual Season Launch at Saddlery on Market, featuring free cupcakes courtesy of cake-ology! You can hear all about our incredible upcoming season of “Reimagining” featuring stories of Resistance, Resettlement, and Reconciliation.

The night will feature sneak peeks from a number of upcoming events, including the announcement of this year’s FemFest 2018 Bake-Off participants, One Night Stand series, and our brand-new Walking Art Tour. You can also enjoy a preview of The Game, a blend of Indian dance and theatre presented by Manohar Performing Arts of Canada. For a look at what’s coming up in the rest of our season, you can get a first glimpse of our new school tour, Home 2.0; learn who will make you laugh until it hurts at our annual Women’s Comedy Night fundraiser; be the first to know the theme for this year’s IWW Cabaret of Monologues; and new details will be revealed about our spring work-in-progress featuring stories of reconciliation.

Want to get creative? We’ll also be hosting a craft station with supplies generously donated by ArtsJunktion! Our speakers will also take part in our “Reimagining” Improv Game, telling us how they would re-purpose a common item to help tackle social issues!

Plus our exclusive FemFest 2018 t-shirts with original artwork by Danielle Morrison, printed by Floodway Printing Co., will be available for sale. For just $20 be one of the first to wear this fashionable tees.

Join us on Friday, August 3^rd as we look forward to another amazing year of life-changing theatre for everyone. The fun kicks off at 7PM – feel free to pop in as you enjoy other events hosted by First Fridays in the Exchange! For more information on the festivities, check out our event page.

White Man’s Indian: not your average high school drama

The incredible emerging playwright/actor Darla Contois will bring her one-woman show White Man’s Indian to FemFest this year and we can’t wait! It’s the kind of coming-of-age story of an Indigenous girl that we rarely get to hear. This girl is the brave, independent-minded Eva, who will captivate you throughout the show and long after you leave the theatre. Darla Contois has combined dark subject matter with humour in such a way that makes them sound like they were meant to be together.

The story launches when a teacher assigns the impossible, a final essay focused on where each student’s family came from and how they transitioned to life in Canada. How does an Indigenous student address the question of adapting to Canada? As a result the play’s main character, Eva, gets a “special assignment” to write about her family history and—spoiler alert—Eva will confess to you that she doesn’t know it. Nobody taught it to her parents or grandparents in school and it’s erased everywhere.

The title White Man’s Indian comes from what Eva calls herself when she feels disconnected from her culture. There is no way she can meet all of the expectations everyone seems to have for her. Like any young person, Eva is searching for herself. There is a lot of humour as Eva tries to figure out her space in society.

What is extremely exciting about hosting the show at FemFest is that writer/performer Darla Contois is a Winnipegger. The play premiered at the Summerworks Festival in Toronto and then played at Uno Fest in Victoria. Now you have a chance to see her where she started out.

“Contois’s convincing performance is the highlight, however, culminating in some haunting and heartrending moments of realization and defeat, but also strength and resilience, that will make many reach for a tissue.” – Jordan Bimm, Now Toronto

Also, let’s be honest, there is a real need right now to explore representation on stage. So that we don’t sweep this question of under the carpet, there will be a panel discussion about it following a select performance of White Man’s Indian. Just three chances to see this great play – September 18 or 21 at 7:00 pm or September 20 at 9:00 pm! All performances are at the U of W Asper Centre for Theatre and Film, 400 Colony Street. Get your tickets now!

 

Our Friends at the Fringe!

It’s that time of year again! The Winnipeg Fringe Festival is coming up next week and as usual, you can catch our team out and about spreading the word on FemFest 2018: Staging Resistance, including the chance to win a free festival pass! Big thank-yous go out to all the companies who are helping us promote FemFest 2018.

We had the opportunity to preview some amazing shows at our One Night Stand series in May, featuring new work by eight local companies as part of Prairie Theatre Exchange’s Carol Shields Festival.  If you’re looking for some great shows to see, check out some of the fantastic productions put on by our past collaborators:

One Date City presented by It’s All Relative Productions

Written by Reba Terlson and co-created by Craig Terlson
Directed by Kaeleigh Ayre

Cast: Reba Terlson, Rachel Hiebert, Drew Jensen

Best friends Morgan and Julie have awful luck with dating. Julie just got out of a relationship and forgets how to date, and Morgan can’t remember the last time she had a worthwhile date. They place a high-stakes bet to see who can go on one great date.

Mother’s Little Secret presented by Broken Record Productions

Written by Jo MacDonald, winner of the FemFest 2017 Bake-Off!

After her latest accident, two daughters conspire to move their mother into a retirement facility. But Casa Espia is no ordinary senior’s home.

 

 

Animosity presented by Downside Up Productions

Written by Wren Brian

Directed by Ntara Curry & Sami Desiree

Cast: Melissa Langdon & Sophie Smith-Dostmohamed

Two people. Trapped in an abyss. Refusing to get along. In this absurdist/existentialist play two people struggle with feelings of fear, disconnection, and anger at each other, the space, and themselves. This is a companion piece to last year’s Anomie (winner of the Harry Rintoul Award for Best New Manitoban Play at the 2017 Winnipeg Fringe).

 
Fractured Expectations, a collective creation presented by Timeless Weaver

Directed by Rachel Smith, co-director of our International Women’s Week Cabaret of Monologues

Cast: Alicia Coulson, Jacob Janzen, Matthew Lupu and Erica Wilson

What kinds of expectations do you have in life? Finish your degree and immediately find your dream job? Go on a blind date and find the person of your dreams? Expectations can become a positive mantra to help you achieve your goals. Other times they can be a curse: an endless stream of disappointments.

 

Confessional presented by The 28th Minute

Written by Tennessee Williams

Directed by George Toles

Cast: Heather Roberts, Jen Robinson, Kevin Ramberran, Justin Fry, Sylvia Richardson, Ivan Henwood, Sherab Rabzyor Yolmo, and our 2018 production assistant Reid Girard!

Tennessee Williams’ play-writing voice is always a lyrical plea for mercy. In Confessional, he takes us to Monk’s Bar, not far from Treasure Island Trailer Park. Eight characters, variously down and out, form a loose community of the not quite vanquished.

 

The Last 48 presented by ArtLaunch Theatre Company

Written by Camille Intson

Directed by Raffie Rosenberg and Simon Miron

Cast: Wes Rambo, Chris Sousa, Pamela Roz, Jack Maier, and Emily Meadows

Stage Managed by our Associate Producer, Daphne Finlayson

Five young associates are forced into competing for spots at a top advertising agency by a mysterious robotic surveillance system. When the workers begin to realize that their pairing together is anything but random, the company’s system of ethics is questioned as the employees struggle to complete their tasks.

There are dozens of more great shows, with amazing artists we have had the pleasure to work with and will feature in our season, but we only have so much space! Check out the Winnipeg Fringe Festival’s website for a full look at what’s up next for independent, experimental theatre!

Burnt: Norah Paton travels to Burning Man, Burning Man travels to FemFest

At FemFest this year, Norah Paton’s Burnt will take you on a theatrical trip to Burning Man, a temporary community in the desert in Nevada. You will meet all kinds of people played by Paton herself. The festival gets its name from the ritual of burning of a huge wooden effigy at the end of the festival. It is founded on ten principles: radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation, and immediacy.

Paton created the piece by visiting Burning Man in 2014, 2015, and 2016 and recording interviews with the people she met there. But instead of any old documentary, Paton wrote a script that is a collage of interviews and brought it to life with her captivating acting skills. She plays a surprisingly varied cast of characters, each with their own distinctly recognizable personality. Ian Huffam wrote in his review that “Paton’s physicality and vocal texture when embodying the subjects of her interviews deftly captures the essence of these people.”

The aesthetic of the show is wonderful, too. The sound design is by AL Connors and the play features electronic music, just as Burning Man does. Dominique Coughlin’s costume and set designs remind us of Le Petit Prince, as Ian Huffam points out, which shares its desert setting with Burnt. Lighting designer Sarah Mansikka creates fascinating visual effects. Dramaturges Emily Pearlman and Brad Long complete the artistic team.

Paton premièred Burnt at the Undercurrents Festival in Ottawa in 2017 and received glowing reviews. Jared Davidson described the première as “fascinating, clever, and immersive” and added “with a script and performance this strong, it will be interesting to see how it develops.” Our Artistic Director saw this production in Ottawa and was excited to share it with FemFest audiences.  And now that Paton has developed it further, Winnipeg theatregoers will see its best version yet.

Paton’s brilliance doesn’t stop at the sheer originality of this concept. The play also criticizes the hypocrisies of Burning Man: how a money-less city that operates on giving has become a capitalist venture, how a place where people are not supposed to leave any traces has developed a litter problem, and how racism and rape culture have crept into a community founded on inclusivity.

The Ottawa Citizen quoted Paton saying “Some of [the ten principles of Burning Man] are totally contradictory, and I definitely do look at those paradoxes…For me, it’s really interesting to see how this temporary city becomes a microcosm of all the issues or tensions or problems that we all see in our lives.”

Come and enjoy Burnt at FemFest at the University of Winnipeg Asper Centre for Theatre and Film, 400 Colony Street, on Tuesday, September 18^th or Wednesday, September 19^th at 9:00 pm or on Thursday, September 20^th at 7:00 pm and prepare to be amazed!