THEATRE: Head à Tête

Family Fun > Theatre/Drama Performances

Working under the theme of the need to share we have asked Alain Goulem to come back and direct a production for Geordie again. Al has been a great friend to Geordie and his shows have made us laugh and think. This time he brings David S. Craig and Robert Morgan’s great show Head à Tête to the Centaur 1 theatre. Head à Tête is set in a future world where people are left alone to fight for their survival. One day two strangers who speak different languages- one French one English- meet and find shelter together beside a tree that has magically produced some fruit. They need to try and find a way to communicate and find a way to share. It’s a beautiful play with something for everyone. The play is for people big and small aged 4 and up. Two incredible performers and an amazing team of artists will create this simple but important story. Recommended for ages 4 and up.

SPECIAL SHOW! Whispers in the Air

Family Fun > Theatre/Drama Performances

Our Elementary School touring show: Internationally renowned puppet artist Clea Minaker directs Attila Clemann’s heartwarming story about communication and finding your voice. The play takes place in 1901 St. John’s Newfoundland where we meet Alex, an 11 year old boy who lives with his Grandmother after the loss of his father. Alex has decided to stop speaking. Given the job of delivering hot lunch to Italian inventor Marconi and his men at the top of Signal hill, Alex watches the this great man apply the technological prowess of his times, stringing kites to wooden towers, and massive grids of a thousand wires to detect the electro-magnetic waves. Alex learns Morse code, and subtly begins to apply this new language and a friendship develops between Alex and Marconi. When the three performers arrive on stage, they are as much inventors as storytellers, working together and communicating in innumerable creative and comical ways, to get their story told. While animating the puppets, incarnating the masked characters, or transforming the image on stage, the actors are a team of puppeteers at work. They mastermind a very detailed choreography while breathing life and imagination into the visual world that unfolds.

SPECIAL SHOW! Jabber

Family Fun > Theatre/Drama Performances

Our High School/Cegep show: Marcus Youssef has created a poignant play that Amanda Kellock (Shape of a Girl, For Art’s Sake) will direct. This creation of Jabber and the production are supported by the Cole Foundation’s Intercultural conversations program. Let’s say three actors play out a story that takes place in a Canadian high school. Let’s say one of them plays an outgoing Egyptian-born girl who wears a Hijab. Let’s say her parents made her change schools recently because of some graffiti that said, “All Muslims must die,” and that the guidance counsellor at her new school, Mr. E, is doing his best to help her fit in. Let’s say that a big part of his advice to her is to stay away from Jorah, a grade 10 guy who has challenges of his own (namely a temper that he inherited from his dad who’s in jail for beating up his mom.) But let’s say that maybe, just maybe, Fatima and Jorah start to, like, like each other… In Jabber, it is appearances, and judgments based on those appearances that are challenged. Some of those judgements arise out of our images of the Middle East, some arise out of our image of working class, teenage anglo boys. All are filtered through the particular cultural laboratory of our schools where, unlike almost anywhere, people of all histories and backgrounds are thrown together, and where young people of all kinds must learn about what they believe in, and how far they are willing to go to defend those beliefs.