THEATRE NEWS:
Soulpepper announces new season;
Stratford's Twelfth Night to be filmed
25 OCT/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency

Albert Schultz has broken out an impressive 12-pack to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Soulpepper Theatre — an even dozen plays to showcase not just the established talents in his company, but some of its new faces as well.

In fact, the show Soulpepper's founding artistic director has chosen to launch the new season and a new year — Ins Choi's Fringe hit, Kim's Convenience — was not only written by a member of the Soulpepper Academy, but will be directed by another (Weyni Mengesha) and feature designs and lighting by two others — Ken MacKenzie and Lorenzo Savoini, respectively.

It will be followed in February by a new production of Lee MacDougall's High Life, which premiered back in 1996. Directed by Stuart Hughes, casting will include Oliver Dennis, Diego Matamoros and Mike Ross.

February will also see director Diana Leblanc revisit Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, which she turned into the toast of Stratford's 1994 season. This time out, Leblanc will be working with a cast that includes Evan Buliung, Nancy Palk, Gregory Prest and Joseph Ziegler.

Ziegler and Palk will be front and centre again in April, as Soulpepper tackles Kaufman and Hart's You Can't Take It With You. This time out, Zeigler will direct, while Palk joins Derek Boyes, Eric Peterson and Krystin Pellerin in the cast. Come May, Schultz himself will direct David Story's Home, with casting to be announced.

Meanwhile, four productions will open at the Young Centre next July, with David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow kicking off the summer in a production directed by David Storch, starring Ari Cohen, Jordan Pettle and Sarah Wilson. It will run in rep with a production of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys, directed by Ted Dykstra, starring Peterson, Pettle and Kenneth Welsh.

The other two shows launching in July are Mikhail Bulgakov's The Royal Comedians (directed by Laszlo Marton and starring Matamoros, Prest and William Webster) and Arthur Miller's The Crucible (directed by Schultz and starring Hughes, Ziegler and Patricia Fagan).

Soulpepper slides into fall with a revival of their acclaimed 2010 production of Miller's Death of a Salesman, reuniting most of the original cast — Ross will take over the role of Happy, originally played by Tim Campbell — under Schultz's direction.

And finally, before they wrap up the year with Michael Shamata's evergreen production of A Christmas Carol, once again starring Ziegler, Soulpepper will feature a new production of Samuel Beckett's Endgame, starring Ziegler and Matamoros, working under the direction of Daniel Brooks, who directed an earlier SP production of the play in 1999, which also starred Matamoros.

While Schultz is particularly exited by two of the summer offerings — The Crucible and The Royal Comedians, both of which view politics through a prism of historical allegory, he's also pretty stoked, it seems, about Kim's Convenience, which he admits moves the company much closer to premiering new and original work. "This has always been the plan," he insists, "But the idea was to carve out a niche first — to become a classical repertory company."

With that accomplished to his satisfaction, he's now launching a four-part new play development project which will make Kim's Convenience the start of a bigger vision, that will eventually yield five commissioned works over the next several years "about specific communities in our city," Schultz says.

Current Soulpepper subscribers can renew today, whil new subscribers will have to wait until Nov. 15. For rates and info, call 416-866-8666 or visit soulpepper.ca

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The Stratford Festival’s production of William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, directed by artistic director Des McAnuff, will be the latest Fest production to be captured on film for future broadcast.

Filming of the about-to-close production is already underway and according toTuesday’s announcement the finished product, produced and directed by Barry Avrich (who also produced earlier films of Festival productions of Caesar and Cleopatra and The Tempest) is slated to be screened across Canada sometime in 2012.