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April 23, 2012
ANNOUNCING THE 2012-2013 SEASON
Geordie Productions is proud to announce our 32nd season. Join us over the next year and see the world in a different way!
WELCOME TO OUR 2012-2013 SEASON!
Message from the Artistic Director, Dean Patrick Fleming:
Geordie feels a great responsibility to our audience and, rightly so, they hold us to a high standard. Not only does our audience hold us to a high standard but so do their parents and teachers and uncles and aunts and grandparents and so on and so on…
We take that responsibility very seriously and so when we are deciding what plays we’ll put into our season we regularly look at the world and we question what we see. We look at what’s happening around us, what news we are getting from around the globe…what’s going on that young people today might be asking questions about and what is affecting our lives. Then we try to take all that we observe and present that in a way that will inform, interest, and excite an audience.
This past year we saw and heard a lot about greed. We heard a lot about how 1% of our population has most of the money in the world and how there doesn’t seem to be a lot of sharing going on. We heard about corruption in the governments and how sometimes things just don’t seem fair. So armed with that information for our Mainstage season we are creating a new play from an old story set in the past and bringing an older play back that is set in the future.
Robin Hood by Paula Wing
Directed by Dean Patrick Fleming
On December 7th in the large theatre at Centaur, Geordie Productions will open its Mainstage season with the World Première of Paula Wing’s new adaptation of Robin Hood. We will team up with Concordia University to bring you this large scale production. I am incredibly excited to work with Paula on this new exciting script and thrilled to be able to direct it.
A classic story: an outlaw who breaks the law to be true to a higher authority: A former rich man who robs from the rich to give to the poor – and to ransom the true king. Robin Hood and his band make their own rules, and live by their own code. In the wilds of Sherwood Forest the most important things are friendship and honour, justice, adventure and hanging out with your friends. Meet you at the trysting tree…
Head à Tête by David S. Craig & Robert Morgan
Directed by Alain Goulem
Staying with the themes of the need to share we move to April when we ask 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.
GEORDIE TWO PLAY TOUR
Now we move to the Geordie tour. Since 1980 Geordie has brought great stories to places many people have never seen. From Blanc-Sablon in the lower north shore to the Magdalen Islands to Chibougamou to Fredericton to right here in Montreal, Geordie will once again tour through Eastern Canada and bring two plays to over 60 000 people from September through March. Our tour will bring two brand new plays on the road with them this year: Jabber and Whispers in the Air.
Jabber by Marcus Youssef
Directed by Amanda Kellock
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 to about what they believe in, and how far they are willing to go to defend those beliefs.
Whispers in the Air by Attila Clemann
Directed by Clea Minaker
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.
As always Geordie will continue to see the world in a different way and bring you our take on stories we believe are important to young people’s lives!
Geordie Productions is a professional theatre company that has been presenting live English theatre for young audiences since 1980. As one of Canada’s largest Theatre for Young Audiences companies, Geordie Productions will reach over 80,000 audience members this year through its Mainstage Series in Montreal as well as its annual School Tour. Always breaking new ground and reaching new audiences, Geordie delivers more than 300 performances each season. Through Geordie’s Mainstage series – an annual season of plays for family audiences in downtown Montreal – the company continues to open up new worlds for the young and young at heart. Geordie offers exciting, insightful theatre that is sure to charm, educate and entertain! As well, Geordie’s school tour makes its way across Quebec, Ontario and New Brunswick, visiting schools, libraries and community centres. Geordie annually visits such communities as the Eastern Townships, the Lower North Shore, the Gaspé, the Magdalen Islands, the Abitibi, the Outaouais and James Bay. Geordie’s aim to entertain, provoke thought, fire up the imagination and challenge audiences of all ages, Geordie reaches more than 80,000 audience members each year.
Geordie Productions, © 2012
4001 Berri, Suite 103, Montreal, Quebec, H2L 4H2
Phone: 514-845-9810 | Fax: 514-845-3634
General Info:info@geordie.ca
Box Office: tickets@geordie.ca
School Performances & Tours: schools@geordie.ca
Administration: admin@geordie.ca
Information: 514-845-9810
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