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  1. Our Season:
    1. Message from the Artistic Director:
    2. Contact:
    3. The Plays:
      1. LES BELLES SOEURS
      2. MISSING 
      3. WAITING FOR THE PARADE
      4. THE MADNESS OF THE SQUARE
      5. BLOOD RELATIONS
      6. SCORCHED
    4. Performance Schedule:

Our Season:

Message from the Artistic Director:

We are very proud to present this wonderful assortment of old and new Canadian plays to celebrate another season at Studio 275. Although not by design, each of the stories we have chosen to share with you this season focuses on women; their pasts, present and futures.

We welcome you to share in the tales we have to tell.

 Judith Chapman

Contact:

Our Box Office can be reached at 416-123-4567 ext 200 or at boxoffice@studio275.ca

For any media related questions please contact Ben Alexander at 416-123-4567 ext 125 or at publicity@studio275.ca
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The Plays:

LES BELLES SOEURS

By Michel Tremblay
Direction Judith Chapman
Set Design Brendan Joyce
Costume Design Agatha Brown
Lighting Design Robert Davidson

Les Belles Soeurs, one of Michel Tremblay's early works (1968) is a seminal play in Canadian theatre history. The story is simple, representing working class women in Montreal of 1965, doing an everyday activity. The play's language, rawness and reality were new to the Québec stage, that was crawling out from under the thumb of religion and strict morality with the help of the Quiet Revolution.

Tremblay tells the tale of Germaine, who has won 1 million Gold Star stamps and invites all of the women she knows to her kitchen to help her stick the stamps into booklets, so she can trade them for merchandise. As they work, the women discuss religion, men, Bingo and their lives in a classic spoken-choral passage. Unbeknownst to Germaine until the very end of the play, her friends are helping themselves to her stamps as they stick and chat.

We are delighted to welcome TD Bank Financial Group as our production sponsor of Les Belles Soeurs, a classic Canadian play to kick start this season. Our first preview is Tuesday, September 15 with our opening performance on Thursday September 17. The production wraps up on Sunday, October 4.

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MISSING 

Winner of the 2005 Herman Voaden National Playwriting Award
By Florence Gibson
Direction  Mitch Holmes
Set Design Sue Gordon
Costume Design Patrick Patton 
Lighting Design Bonnie Brett

We are delighted to welcome award-winning playwright Florence Gibson back to Studio 275 for the world premier of her play Missing.

Based on a true story, Missing juxtaposes the story of two women, Evelyn MacMillan - who goes missing from her home and Detective Carol Seaforth - whose job it is to find Evelyn. Set in 1974 in rural Ontario, this mystery tracks both of these women's circumstances. As Detective Seaforth struggles to solve the case in order to prove herself worthy her new position as one of the first female detectives in Ontario, Evelyn goes to extreme lengths to ensure she isn't discovered in the new life that she has adopted.

Missing will keep you wondering to the very end how these two women's lives will ultimately intersect.

We are delighted to welcome The Globe and Mail back as the production sponsors for Missing. Our first preview is Tuesday, October 13 with our opening performance on Thursday, October 15. The final performance of Missing is on Sunday, November 1.

WAITING FOR THE PARADE

By John Murrell
Direction Judith Chapman
Set Design Brendan Joyce
Costume Design Agatha Brown
Lighting Design Robert Davidson
 
John Murrell's Waiting for the Parade, a play that has been performed throughout Canada, is truly one of our Canadian classics.

First produced in 1977 in Calgary, Waiting for the Parade tells the story of 5 women living in Calgary during World War II. This episodic 24-scene play unveils the trials, tribulations, and secrets of these 5 women while their husbands and sons are either away at war or trying to avoid it. The extreme circumstances these women are living under and their interactions combine to reveal their very different characters.

When speaking of the play, John Murrell said "women are the connective tissue which allows the human race to keep faith that normal life will ultimately return. Women remind us, with wit and resilience, of the great importance of family, and also that family is not everything; of the great importance of patriotism, and also that patriotism is not everything. Their pragmatism is utterly heroic."

Waiting for the Parade allows us to look at the parade of our past to better understand its results, our present.

Best Buy has returned for a third season of support with their production sponsorship of Waiting for the Parade. Previews are on November 10 and 11 with our opening performance on November 12. Waiting for the Parade runs through to November 29.

THE MADNESS OF THE SQUARE

By Marjorie Chan
Direction Mitch Holmes
Set Design Sue Gordon
Costume Design Patrick Patton
Lighting Design Bonnie Brett

The world was shocked when a peaceful, 7 week demonstration became a massacre in Beijing's Tianamen Square on June 4, 1989.

Marjorie Chan's The Madness of the Square shares with us the story of four young women who found themselves in the middle of Tianamen Square when the Chinese army rolled in. Using audio interviews of protest survivors as a resource, Ms. Chan opens the usually closed door to one of the last century's most shocking events.

This bold and courageous play is a product of Studio 275's Play Development Program and we are delighted to host its world premiere.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is the production sponsor for The Madness of the Square, which previews on February 9 and 10 with our opening performance on February 11. Our final performance is on Sunday February 28.

By Sharon Pollock
Direction Judith Chapman
Set Design Brendan Joyce
Costume Design Agatha Brown
Lighting Design Robert Davidson

Blood Relations is another Canadian classic in our season about women's stories. This is the tale of Lizzie Borden.

Sharon Pollock's psychological murder mystery received its first professional production in 1980 and has been performed many times since. Based on a highly graphic and newsworthy double murder that took place in 1892 in Fall River, Massachusetts, Blood Relations offers the telling of the circumstances that led up to and surrounded the murders by means of an unusual theatrical framework.

Although Lizzie Borden was acquitted of the crimes, they were never solved and we still wonder about it today. Was Lizzie guilty, did she get away with murder? Or was she simply a very modern woman, who spoke her mind in the wrong era?

We are delighted that Alcan is the production sponsor for Blood Relations that will run from it first preview on March 9 through to March 28, with the official opening on March 11.

SCORCHED

By Wajdi Mouawad
Translation Linda Gaboriau
Direction Mitch Holmes
Set Design Sue Gordon
Costume Design Patrick Patton 
Lighting Design Bonnie Brett

Wajdi Mouawad's most recent play ends our present season of women's stories.

Scorched is a testament to the fact that a family can be united and strengthened even after death. Mouawad's tale takes a twin brother (Simon) and sister (Janine) to their mother's (Nawal) homeland of Lebanon, after her death, in search of a brother - that they did not know they had and their father - who they thought was dead. Nawal has charged her children with the delivery of a letter to each of their long lost family members. The twins' journey takes them to a country in civil war, where they uncover their mother's past as a political activist and prisoner of war.

Mouawad, the Artistic Director of French Theatre at the National Arts Centre was born in Beirut, grew up in France and was educated in Québec. His poetic language and vivid imagery weave the many influences of his life together in this moving play.

We are delighted to welcome IKEA to our family of production sponsors for Scorched that previews on April 6 and 7 with the official opening on April 8. This production runs until Sunday, April 25.


Performance Schedule:


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DISCLAIMER:
The content of this website is a combination of reality and fiction. Each of the plays described are actual plays, are written by the authors credited, and they are accurately described. The dates, names of all other people associated with the productions, location, contact information, and sponsorship information are all fictitious.