“Worlds of Exile,” Theatre @ York’s 2017-18 season, culminates in Christopher Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage, an epic story in an intimate and innovative new production directed by acclaimed director, dramaturg and playwright Peter Hinton.
Shadowed by war, Dido, Queen of Carthage is the original tragic love story with its hero Aeneas, the exiled prince of Troy, compelled by Fate to leave his beloved Dido, Queen of Carthage to fulfil a political destiny. Aeneas, the son of Venus, is one of the Trojans who escapes from the city after it is destroyed. In his exile he seeks refuge in Carthage. Learning of Aeneas’ experience and loss, Dido falls in love with him, only to be forsaken shortly after. Torn between her personal abandonment and national sacrifice, Dido performs an ultimate act of resistance.
Dido, Queen of Carthage is Marlowe’s first play, written when he was just 19 and still a student at Cambridge. Inspired by the fourth book of Virgil’s Aeneid, the story of Dido and Aeneas has stimulated artists for two millennia; from Ovid to Henry Purcell to modern-day science-fiction like Battlestar Galactica, with its exiled travellers seeking a prophesied new home. It isn’t hard to see the story’s appeal.
Performance Schedule: March 18 to 23 at 7:30pm
Box Office Information: Tickets are available online or over the phone 416-736-5888
Previews: $7.00 March 18 & 19
Relaxed Performance: $5.00
Thursday March 22 7:30pm
All Other Performances:
Tickets: $20.00
Student/Senior $12.00
(Group price applies when all group tickets are purchased at once for a single performance. Not available online, please phone or visit the box office)
We’re bringing Central Perk to you! Enjoy a tasty beverage, something sweet and a few performances to start off your week. Winters Café is here and we’re providing you with a cozy environment to chill out and listen to a variety of performers: musicians, comedians, playwrights, poets – you name it!
Interested in performing? Email us at wcmaster@yorku.ca or drop-in to the Office of the Head (121), or the Junior Common Room (012), Winters College and sign-up. Drop-in performances are also allowed if there are open spots!
[caption id="attachment_99589" align="alignright" width="263"]
The Ashley Plays. Photo: Judith Rudakoff[/caption]
The Ashley Plays is an annual performance cycle of short, devised, site-specific monodramas, written by the playwrights and developed by the dramaturgs in the 3290 and 4290 Playwriting & New Play Dramaturgy courses taught by Professor Judith Rudkoff in York University’s Department of Theatre.
Each piece in the cycle is thematically linked, relates to the site in which it takes place, and involves a character named Ashley,
The audience is divided into three pods of moving spectators. Each group is led through the cycle by a guide to experience the monodramas up close.
Meeting Place:
Audience members are asked to assemble outside the Joseph G. Green Studio Theatre in the lobby of the Centre for Film and Centre. Please arrive by 12:45 pm for instructions and to be grouped into pods.
While admission is free, voluntary donations will be collected for Oxfam Unwrapped, an online charity from which we will be purchasing life-changing resources for communities worldwide.
4290 Class
Brandon Abas, Catherine Brown, Vanessa Cocca, Brooke Dalton, Sabrina Gomes, Jacob Heisler, Rachael Henfrey, Kathryn Irvine, Jacob Lin, Heather Love, Jayna Mees, Nia Osei, Jade Silman, Cassandra Troiano,
3290 Class
Cara Baum, David Browne, Alessandra Cavallini, Amanda D’Souza, FrancescaFalcone, Araceli Ferrara, Bradley Hoskins, Megi Kaca, Celeste LaCroix, Vitoria Matias, Robyn Mercanti, Andrea Rivas Quintanilla, Britney Seo, Carol Sequeira, Cassandra Weir
It’s getting colder, which means it’s time to get cozy! Keep warm at the second Winters Café next Monday, October 29th. We’re offering warm beverages, sweet treats and board games. Plus, we’ll have live performances from your student peers. Interested in performing yourself? Sign up HERE!
Have a chat over delicious brunch-style foods with the Dean of the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design, Norma Sue Fisher-Stitt. Brunch will be served from 12:00pm-2:00pm in the Junior Common Room (012) of Winters College on Thursday, November 15th 2018.
50 years since its founding, Theatre @ York opens the 2018-2019 season with the premiere of rochdale, a new play by David Yee under the direction of Nina Lee Aquino, featuring the fourth-year acting ensemble.
Opened in 1968, Rochdale College was an experiment in student-run alternative education and co-operative living. The project ultimately failed when it could not cover its financing and neighbours complained that it had become a haven for drugs and crime.
“We are delighted to open our season with a new Canadian play that embraces the same spirit of experimentation and social advocacy that guided the founding of the Department of Theatre at York 50 years ago,” commented department chair Marlis Schweitzer. David Yee and Nina Lee Aquino have collaborated on a play that not only gives voice to the youth, energy, and passion of the 1960s but also resonates with students today. We are incredibly fortunate to have such Canadian innovators kick off this season, as we reflect on the past 50 years and look ahead to the future.”
David Yee is a Canadian actor, playwright and the artistic director of fu-Gen Theatre Company. His play carried away on the crest of a wave won the 2015 Governor General Award.
Nina Lee Aquino is an award-winning director and dramaturge, and the Artistic Director of Factory Theatre. She is committed to the development of new works, and to the manifestation of interculturalism in theatre.
Performance Schedule:
7:30 p.m. on November 17, 19-23
1:00 p.m. on November 21 & 23
2 p.m. on November 24
Tickets $7- 20
Online Box Office or call 416-736-5888
Theatre @ York presents Middletown by Will Eno, featuring the acting students in the MFA program and directed by the esteemed Jackie Maxwell.
Lives of the inhabitants of Middletown transect in an emotional journey that takes them from the local library to outer space and beyond. The moving and funny play emerges as a meditation on loneliness, birth, death, and the anxieties of our contemporary lives.
Performance Schedule:
Thursday, January 24 7:30pm Opening
Friday, January 25 2pm & 7:30pm
Saturday, January 26, 2pm
Come to the Absinthe Pub & Coffee Shop and get to know your Head of Winters College, John Mayberry, over some tasty nachos – on us! Enjoy an evening of nachos, trivia and good conversations.
We’re bringing Central Perk to you! Enjoy a tasty beverage, something sweet and a few performances at this semester’s first Winters Café.
Winters Café is a cozy environment where you can chill out and listen to a variety of performers: musicians, comedians, playwrights, poets – you name it! Board games and good fun is also encouraged.
Interested in performing? Sign up here!
Theatre @ York presents Orlando by Sarah Ruhl, directed by MFA candidate Lindsay Bell and The Balcony by Jean Genet, directed by MFA candidate Margaret Legere. The two shows will be performed in repertory and feature the MFA and fourth-year actors.
Orlando is a dramatic adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s feminist classic by contemporary playwright Sarah Ruhl. It investigates the adventures of a poet who changes sex from man to woman and lives for centuries, meeting the key figures of English literary history.
The Balcony uses the setting of an unnamed city and a distant background of a revolution and counterrevolution to explore strains of power in a society. The play compelling examines the delicate equilibrium of reality and illusion.
Performance Schedule:
Orlando
Sunday, March 24 at 7:30pm (Preview)
Tuesday, March 26 at 7:30pm (Opening)
Wednesday, March 27 at 1:00pm
Friday, March 29 at 7:30pm
Saturday, March 30 at 1:00pm
The Balcony
Monday, March 25 at 7:30pm (Preview)
Wednesday, March 27 at 7:30pm (Opening)
Thursday, March 28 at 7:30pm
Friday, March 29 at 1:00pm
Saturday, March 30 at 7:30pm
Tickets $7- 20
Buy online or call 416-736-5888
[caption id="attachment_99589" align="alignright" width="263"] The Ashley Plays. Photo: Judith Rudakoff[/caption]
The Ashley Plays is an annual performance cycle of short, devised, site-specific monodramas, written by the playwrights and developed by the dramaturgs in the 3290 and 4290 Playwriting & New Play Dramaturgy courses taught by Professor Judith Rudkoff in York University’s Department of Theatre.
Each piece in the cycle is thematically linked, relates to the site in which it takes place, and involves a character named Ashley,
The audience is divided into three pods of moving spectators. Each group is led through the cycle by a guide to experience the monodramas up close.
Meeting Place:
Audience members are asked to assemble outside the Joseph G. Green Studio Theatre in the lobby of the Centre for Film and Centre. Please arrive by 12:45 pm for instructions and to be grouped into pods.
While admission is free, voluntary donations will be collected for Oxfam Unwrapped, an online charity from which we will be purchasing life-changing resources for communities worldwide.
Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is a beloved feminist revisioning of two of Shakespeare’s most well-known plays, Othello and Romeo & Juliet. Written by Canadian playwright Ann-Marie MacDonald, the play explores the hypothetical question: what if Shakespeare’s tragedies were actually intended to be comedies? To learn the answer to this question, please join us November 16-23 in the Joseph G. Green Theatre to find out.
Performance Schedule:
Sat, Nov. 16 (preview 1) @ 7:30 pm
Sun. Nov. 17 (preview 2) @ 7:30 pm
Tues. Nov. 19 (Opening) @ 7:30 pm
Wed. Nov. 20 @ 1:00 pm
Wed. Nov. 20 (Relaxed Performance) @ 7:30 pm –Plan your visit
Thurs. Nov. 21@ 7:30 pm
Fri. Nov. 22 @ 1:00 pm
Fri. Nov. 22 @ 7:30pm
Sat. Nov. 23 @ 2:00 pm
Tickets $7- 20
Online Box Office or call 416-736-5888
Theatre @ York presents Elizabeth Rex by Timothy Findley directed by ted witzel
Timothy Findley’s Elizabeth Rex shares Good Night Desdemona’s interest in the Shakespearean canon.
Here, Findley imagines an intimate meeting between a group of players and Queen Elizabeth I, who has ordered a command performance of Much Ado About Nothing as she awaits the execution of a former lover, the Earl of Essex. With wit and poetry, Findley explores the entanglement of love, desire, and gender identity.
Performance Schedule:
Tuesday March 17th at 7:30 p.m. (Preview)
Wednesday March 18th at 1:00 p.m. (Preview)
Wednesday March 18th at 7:30 p.m. (Opening)
Thursday March 19 at 7:30 p.m. (Relaxed Performance)
Friday March 20th at 1:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.
Saturday March 21st at 2:00 p.m.
Saturday March 21st @ 7:30 p.m. (Closing)
Box Office Information
Previews: $7.00
All Other Performances:
Tickets: $20.00
Student: $12.00
Senior: $12.00
Groups of 10 or more: $10.00
(Group price applies when all group tickets are purchased at once for a single performance. Not available online, please phone or visit the box office)
Buy online or call 416-736-5888
Relaxed Performance: Thursday, March 19th at 7:30pm
A Relaxed performance is intended specifically to be sensitive to and accepting of audience members who may benefit from a more relaxed environment. The performance is designed to reduce anxiety and provide a safe, enjoyable experience, taking into account variable sensory, communication or learning needs and abilities. This means that there is a more casual-than-usual approach to front-of-house etiquette and we ask audience members to be aware of people’s needs to move or make involuntary noise.
