Swan Song of Maria--Coming Soon!

SWAN SONG OF MARIA--FUNDRAISING LETTER

December 1, 2009

Dear Friend of the Theatre,

Threshold is known for its dynamic and unpredictable brand of theatre that blends the verbal and visual, personal and political, social and poetic. Our latest project, in association with El Destino Productions, is playwright/actor Carol Cece Anderson's critically acclaimed new play, Swan Song of María: A Tragic Fairy Tale. I am excited about directing this piece, which imaginatively fuses language, classical ballet, tap, and Afro-Cuban-Latin-Jazz music, to depict the story of Jillian and Joe, an interracial couple, together since the late 1960's. As Jillian, an aging tap dancer, confronts Alzheimer's, she is haunted by her playwright husband, Joe's ever present muse: María, a beautiful ballerina he met briefly, decades earlier, in the midst of a revolution. Jillian wonders where she belongs in Joe's life, and Joe is ultimately compelled to face his own fading idealism, and the painful promise Jillian once asked him to make. Swan Song of Maria is a poignant story of two hearts struggling to rediscover love before it is lost forever.

Anderson began working on her play in 2006, and honed it as playwright-in-residence at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, during their 2008/09 season. This culminated in an NAC sponsored staged reading in July 2009, at Dancemakers in the Distillery District. Threshold and El Destino assembled an extraordinarily talented creative team for the reading, all of whom have expressed interest in participating in our planned Toronto production. These artists include: actors, Lili Francks & John Blackwood; Cuban pianist, Hilario Durán; National Ballet of Canada, dancer, Bridgett Zehr; ballet consultant, Evelyn Hart; choreographers, Roberto Campanella & Debbie Wilson; and NAC dramaturg, Paula Danckert. In November 2009, Black Theatre Workshop presented the successful world premiere of Swan Song of María at the MAI Theatre in Montreal.

Threshold Theatre and El Destino Productions are committed to staging Swan Song of María, in Toronto in 2010. In order to do this, we need your help. Our fundraising target is $50,000.00. So far, we have raised $26,000.00 from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council. We have set a fundraising target of $24,000.00 from individual and corporate supporters. Your donation will contribute directly to the Toronto premiere of this powerful new Canadian play. A reply letter is below. Your contribution to Threshold Theatre, no matter how large or small, is 100% tax-deductible, and a charitable receipt will be issued to you, with our deepest gratitude.

Sincerely,

Mark Cassidy

Co-Artistic Director Threshold Theatre

www.thresholdtheatre.ca

Yes! I wish to support Swan Song of María: A Tragic Fairy Tale by making a charitable contribution to Threshold Theatre. Name ________________________________________________________________________

Address ______________________________________________________________________ City ___________________________ Prov ___________ Postal Code ________________

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Please make cheques or money orders payable to: Threshold Theatre.

I would like to make a contribution of: $100 $75 $50 $25 Other amount _________

About Carol Cece Anderson's Swan Song of María: A Tragic Fairy Tale:

"A poetic blend of word and image…A melancholy ballad of a play…Carson McCullers and her Ballad of the Sad Café come to mind…The play's intermingling of art forms creates an unforgettable ambiance that leaves the audience spellbound…A bittersweet joy…A gem. Anderson doesn't preach, she weaves." - The Montreal Gazette

"There is much human frailty here…Anderson's probing play, achieves a moving portrait of difficult subject matter." - The Rover

"Characters prevail in a beautiful tragedy…The play is innovative, fusing language, dance, and music to tell a story." - The McGill Tribune

"The play is realistic in its depiction of Alzheimer's, and the story of two lovers losing their deep-seated connection is powerful and heartbreaking."

- The Concordian

Please mail cheques or money orders to: Threshold Theatre c/o El Destino Productions 465 Yonge Street, P.O. Box 73013

Toronto, Ontario,

M4Y 1X0

We will be accepting donations for this project from December 1, 2009 - September 30, 2010.

Charitable Registration #846280956 RR0001

Director's Note for Forms of Devotion....now playing at the Baby Grand Theatre in Kingston....Sept. 25-Oct.10

I first met Diane Schoemperlen back in the mid 90's when Threshold Theatre was based in Kingston. I loved the down to earth characters, rich imagination and innovative style of her wonderful first novel, In The Language of Love, and contacted her to see if we could get permission to adapt it into a play. She said yes and that show went on to very successful runs in Kingston and Toronto. When her subsequent book of stories, Forms of Devotion, came out I was blown away by its inventiveness, humour, sensuality, and multi-layered take on the 'faithful vs. the faithless'.

Threshold's Forms of Devotion mixes selected texts from Diane's stories with our responses to the themes of faith, doubt, fear, longing, and hope, through the lens of a contemporary couple. Our aim has been to capture the spirit of the book while creating a performance that has it's own theatrical life and emotional logic. Throughout the process, I have been guided by the quote Diane provides at the beginning of her first story: "Strangely enough, we are all seeking a form of devotion that fits our sense of wonder." I hope that there are scenes, images, moments in the piece which speak to you. My sincere thanks go out to the entire creative team who contributed to and collaborated on the adaptation every step of the way.

Mark Cassidy

oakwood village theatre festival!

In March 2010, Threshold Theatre will launch the first annual Oakwood Village Theatre Festival. This project is exciting on many levels, combining ground breaking theatrical works with grassroots community-building. The Oakwood Village Theatre Festival will unite artist and audience in experiencing a village, both real and imagined, remembered and envisioned.

We see the Oakwood Village Theatre Festival as an annual event occurring in the first week of March at the Oakwood Village Library and Performing Arts Centre in the northwest part of Toronto. Proposals will be invited from theatre artists/groups based in the area bound by Eglinton West, Bathurst, Davenport and Lansdowne From these submissions, four will be selected. Two other artists/groups from outside the area will also be invited to participate. The festival will be curated with a view toward presenting works which reflect the cultural diversity of the area along with a dynamic range of theatrical approaches. As well, a few local artists from other disciplines will be invited to participate around the theatrical productions: for example, an exhibit or installation at the library during the festival, and musical performances as part of the opening and closing celebrations. The Saturday afternoon of the festival will feature a roundtable discussion with local politicians and concerned citizens, to share perspectives on some of the themes being raised in the plays presented. To engage local youth and showcase their talent, student groups from Vaughan Rd. Academy and Oakwood Collegiate Institute will be invited to perform during the weekend segment of the festival. Threshold will produce, administer, promote and publicize the festival as well as provide technical support. Participating groups will prepare their shows independently and collect 100% of their box office revenue.

What’s the big idea? Simply stated, it is to understand the importance of village, and then to help build one. This is a festival that brings together a community while exploring compelling socio-political ideas through theatre. For our first festival we have decided to ask artists to respond to the theme of VILLAGE. It is a concept rich in associations. A quick search on the internet reveals a few of these:

There was this mountain village in Russia where my music was getting in on some German radio station. I remember this because music used to get up to Saskatchewan from Texas. Late at night after the local station closed down.

Joni Mitchell

You understand something that many people here don’t recognize: the extraordinary power that is Africa at village level - at community level.

Stephen Lewis

The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village.

Marshall McLuhan

Many of our own people here in this country do not ask about computers, telephones and television sets. They ask - when will we get a road to our village.

Thabo Mbeki

You could perhaps better tell the story of a place by writing of a tiny village as a sort of prism into the bigger issues the culture was facing. Nicholas Kristof

It takes a whole village to raise a child.

African Proverb

While one artist/group may create a piece about an ancestral village, another may concentrate on the implications of the so-called global village. Yet another group may reflect on the phrase ‘village idiot’ and create a piece about outcasts and ostracism, about mental illness or homelessness. All the artists involved will be asking vital questions about how we belong, about community. By definition, the village community is regarded as the political unit out of which the modern state developed. The concept of village continues to define us in many different ways. The productions featured in the first annual Oakwood Village Theatre Festival will bring fresh perspectives to the theme and spark dialogue in a way that only theatre can!

trying to unravel the mysteries swirling within and around you....theatre-- our obsessions and neuroses distilled, laid bare... in a way that offers something unexpected, challenging the patterns we get stuck in

because yeah, the notion anything is possible is true and staring at us daily even though we are hovering in same bodies... husks for the connections which can be made between people

the blessing of working with others....of reaching toward something artificial yet in other ways more real

more plays....shared mysteries!

dream forces

theatre should be a vehicle for huge dream forces. we limit ourselves so much in our desire to be liked. attempting to replicate others who society says are 'doing it right'.

i want a theatre that is both bigger (in imagination) and simpler than the one i see around me. there won't be an emphasis on technology, but space internally and drive for entering the dreamworld.

i am inspired working with people who want to challenge the notion of what is acceptable in art...who genuinely work in the now, meaning the depths and possibilities of it.

julian beck's questions

Researching for a new Threshold piece BEAUTIFUL NON-VIOLENT ANARCHIST REVOLUTION, based on diaries of Julian Beck and Judith Malina--there is a section in Becks diaries where he asks a series of questions which still seem so relevant:

questions 1963

what is the difference between questions and answers

why do you go to the theatre

is it important to go to the theatre

is it important to read

do people who go to the theatre differ from people who don't go to the theatre

what happens to you if you go to the theatre

when you leave the theatre have you changed, that is of course you are changed by each moment of experience so three hours later you are naturally different, but i mean have you changed actively

do you want to change actively

are you content

is it good to change

is anything sufficient unchanged

do you go the theatre for answers

do you have any questions

does it matter how we live

what is happening to us

what happens in the theatre

do you go to the theatre to find out about life

is it easier to observe life in the theatre or in the street

have you experienced joy in the theatre

have you experienced joy in the street

what do you enjoy

do you get sensations in the theatre

do you go to the theatre for intellectual exercises

do you go to the theatre to find out if it has figured out what is going on

do you go to the theatre because it might be telling the truth

is anything that is the truth

are newspapers the thruth

do playwrights record the truth more than editors

do newspapers lie do playwrights lie do actors lie

do playwrights or editors or actors lie deliberately

do you got the theatre to see how well an actor can disguise himself as somebody else

do you think that actors should try to personify excellent being

what is excellent being

can an actor show you excellent being

what is useful

what is a good question

what is a way to find answers

what will knock down the prison walls

what is the way

what is the relationship between the actor and the spectator

what is speech

what is the important enquiry

do we have time to ask all the questions

which ones do you want to ask

will you ask them now

what do we need

how can we get it

how can we touch one another

how can we make it happen

how can we make a theatre which makes love now

how can we make a theatre which is worthy of the life of its spectators

how can we make a theatre when we do not know any answers but only vague hints about how to ask questions

i end with questions because i have no answers

but what i want is answers

questions 1968

how do we feed all the people

how do we stop all the wars

how do we open the doors of all the jails

how do we disintegrate violence

how do we obliterate racism

how do we get rid of money (capitalism)

how do we undo early death

how do we end militarism

how do we put an end to authoritarian systems

how do we end the class system thing

how do we find the answers to these questions

how do we do it now

churches of theatre

the churches of theatre are afraid of ...reaching out toward

a world that is in a perpetual state of rhythmic becoming, changing, renewing

they want to freeze the world with themselves as experts, intermediaries

removed from our senses

rigid, ossified, 'classic'.