Thinking of Yu
By Carole Fréchette
Translated by John Murrell
Lindsay Burns - Maggie
For Alberta Theatre Projects: Heartbreaker, For Love and Money, Moliere, Zadie's Shoes, How I Learned to Drive, Popcorn, The Ugly Man, Skygeezers, Our Country’s Good. Elsewhere: Lindsay is most known for her witty and insightful one-woman shows, Dough: The Politics of Martha Stewart, The Vajayjay Monologues and Pack of Lies which have toured to New York, Winnipeg and Edmonton. Lindsay first took part in the Playrites festival in 1992 and has been an enthusiastic supporter of it ever since. She is a passionate Calgarian who lives with, and loves deeply, Grant and Jasper.
Johanne Deleeuw - Stage Manager/Production Stage Manager
Johanne is a free-lance stage manager, director and dramaturge who is proud to make her home in Calgary. In recent years, she has stage managed for One Yellow Rabbit, Vertigo Theatre, Ground Zero and Sage Theatre. Her directing work has been seen, among other places, at Vertigo, Lunchbox Theatre and here at ATP, where she directed the production of A Boy’s Own Jedi Handbook. Johanne also works as an administrator in the arts and other non-profit sectors. Currently, she works with Calgary’s Green Fools Theatre and The Asian Heritage Foundation, where she is coordinating programming for Asian Heritage Month in May 2012. This is Johanne’s first time as a stage manager with ATP and her first experience working on the Enbridge playRites Festival and she is having a blast!
Alan Dilworth - Director
Alan's work has been performed in theatres across Canada and in the United States. He is co-artistic director of Sheep No Wool, founder of Belltower Theatre and an associate artist with acclaimed indie companies: Groundwater Productions, Convergence Theatre and Project:Humanity. Alan is currently a resident artist with Project: Humanity at The Theatre Centre in Toronto and a member of The Michael Langham Workshop for Classical Direction at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Alan has an MFA in directing from York University. He was the 2005 Urjo Kareda Emerging Artist in Residence at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto. Alan is the recipient of a Crow's Theatre Directing Award and the Toronto Theatre Critics Award (The Middle Place), two SummerWorks Jury Prizes for Outstanding Production (The Unforgetting, If We Were Birds), an Acting Irish International Theatre Festival Jury Prize for Outstanding Production (Da), and has been nominated for two Dora awards for his work as a director. Alan is currently producing Radical Practices: The Edward Bond Festival and will be directing Pamela Sinha’s Crash at Theatre Passe Muraille in April.
David Fraser - Lighting Design
The 2012 Enbridge playRites Festival will mark David’s seventh year as the festival’s lighting designer at the Martha Cohen Theatre. Other previous designs with the company include the set and lighting for The Goat, and The Syringa Tree, the lighting for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Unity (1918) and twenty-five other world premieres tucked into seven years of festivals here at Alberta Theatre Projects. As an Edmonton-based artist, David works extensively in theatre, dance and opera. His theatrical work has been seen across the country from The National Arts Centre in Ottawa, to The Belfry Theatre in Victoria, and his designs in dance have been seen both nationally and internationally with Edmonton based Choreographer Tania Alvarado. He has been nominated for a Betty Mitchell and a Jessie Richardson award for his lighting designs. In Edmonton, David has also been nominated for nine Sterling Hanes awards for both set and lighting, and he has been the recipient once for his lighting design with Theatre Network. David is a member of the Associated Designers of Canada.
Carole Fréchette - Playwright
Carole was born in Montréal and is a graduate of the National Theatre School. Still based in Montréal, she has been a force in Québec theatre for over 25 years. Her work, translated into 18 languages, has been staged all over the world, from Montréal to Reykjavik, and Paris to Tokyo. Fréchette is also the author of children’s novels and translations. She won the 1995 Governor General’s Award for Drama for her play Les Quatre Morts de Marie and the Chalmers Canadian Play Award for John Murrell’s English version of that play, The Four Lives of Marie. She also received Governor General’s Award nominations for La Peau d’Elisa in 1998, for Les Sept Jours de Simon Labrosse in 1999, for Jean et Béatrice in 2002 and for Serial Killer et autres pieces courtes in 2008. Fréchette is the 2002 winner of the Siminovitch Prize. She was one of the five nominees for Le Grand Prix de littérature dramatique 2009, in France, for La Petite pièce en haut de l’escalier. Her plays are published in French by Leméac/ Actes-Sud Papiers. John Murrell’s English versions of The Four Lives of Marie, Seven Days in the life of Simon Labrosse, Elisa’s Skin, Helen’s Necklace, and John and Beatrice are published by Playwrights Canada Press. . In 2012, her new play Je pense à Yu, will have four different productions, in Paris, in Montreal, in Brussels and in Calgary, at Alberta Theatre Projects in John Murrell’s English version.
Peter Moller - Sound Design and Composition
Peter Moller is a Calgary-based musician/designer/performer. He has run Egg Press Co., a graphic and sound design establishment, from the dawn of time. Peter is the recipient of a number of Betty Mitchell (Calgary) and Elizabeth Sterling Haynes (Edmonton) awards and nominations for his theatre sound designs. Recent sound designs: Heartbreaker and Nisei Blue for Alberta Theatre Projets, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie for Winnipeg’s Manitoba Theatre for Young People, Richard III, Macbeth and The Queens for The Shakespeare Company, And So It Goes and Goodness for Downstage Theatre, Ruined for the Ellipsis Tree Collective, Acres of Dreams (as musician) with the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra for One Yellow Rabbit’s High Performance Rodeo, and Hunchback (as musician) for Edmonton’s Catalyst Theatre. Peter drums and tours with Kris Demeanor and His Crack Band. Selections of his sound and graphic designs can be heard and seen at www.eggpress.ca.
Allan Morgan - Jerry
Allan is very pleased to be returning to Alberta Theatre Projects. He was last seen in Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre (he was nominated for a Betty Mitchell award) and How Do I love Thee. Previous credits include: Two Words for Snow, Aberhardt Summer, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, and Studies In Motion. Other Calgary credits include: Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, and The Overcoat for Theatre Calgary, and It Is Solved By Walking for Urban Curvz. A resident of Vancouver, where he is a regular performer at Bard on the Beach, Allan has appeared across Canada, and also toured internationally. He has been nominated for 7 Jessie Richardson awards in his hometown, and has garnered 4 awards for his work over the years. He was also voted Performer of the Year in Victoria for his work in I Am My Own Wife at that city’s Belfry Theatre. Allan is pleased to return to see and work with his many friends and colleagues in Calgary, his home away from home. He is a graduate of Studio 58 Theatre program in Vancouver.
John Murrell - Translator
One of Canada’s most frequently produced playwrights, John Murrell is also a highly respected arts advocate and mentor. His plays, which have been translated into 15 languages and performed in more than 30 countries, include Memoir, Waiting For The Parade, Farther West, Democracy, and The Faraway Nearby. He is also an esteemed translator of classic and modern theatre, including eight plays by Québec playwright Carole Fréchette. Murrell has collaborated with composer John Estacio on the celebrated operas Filumena (2003), Frobisher (2007), and Lillian Alling (2010); and with composer/conductor Bramwell Tovey on The Inventor (world premiere at the Calgary Opera in 2011). He is an Officer of the Order of Canada, a member of the Alberta Order of Excellence, and a recipient of the Governor General of Canada’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement. His first job in professional theatre was as Playwright-in-Residence at Alberta Theatre Projects, between 1975 and 1977.
Patti Neice - Assistant Stage Manager
Patti is thrilled to be part of the Enbridge playRites Festival. Selected credits include: Stage Manager for The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Other Eric Carle Favorites (Mermaid Theatre, tours of Canada/USA/Ireland/South Korea & Singapore) Lillibet, Maddy Heisler, The Net & Shatter (The Ships Company), How it Works (Mulgrave Road). Assistant SM for To Kill A Mockingbird (Theatre Calgary); Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Crazy for You & How the Other Half Loves (Drayton Entertainment), Marion Bridge (The Company Theatre).
Vanessa Porteous - Dramaturg
Vanessa is the artistic director of Alberta Theatre Projects. This is her third season in the role. Directing highlights at Alberta Theatre Projects include The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood; the world premieres of Tyland by Greg MacArthur (Enbridge playRites Festival 2010) and The Erotic Anguish of Don Juan by The Old Trout Puppet Workshop (2009/2011); The Syringa Tree starring Meg Roe; the world premieres of Why Freud Fainted by David Rhymer, and Pinocchio by The Old Trout Puppet Workshop; and Proof, Plan B, The Hobbit, and the world premiere of Respectable by Ron Chambers. Other favourite directing work includes Queen Lear for Urban Curvz Theatre, The Enchanted Child with the Calgary Opera Emerging Artists Ensemble, and When That I Was for The Shakespeare Company, for which she won a Betty Mitchell Award for Outstanding Direction in 2009. From 1998-2006, Vanessa was a dramaturg on staff at Alberta Theatre Projects, where she oversaw the development and production of over 30 new Canadian plays. Vanessa is a jury member for the 2011 Elinore & Lou Siminovitch Prize in Theatre, the largest award in Canadian theatre, and recently headed to Vancouver to direct The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood at the Arts Club Theatre Company.
Scott Reid - Set & Video/Projection Design
Selected Alberta Theatre Projects credits include: East of Berlin, Half Life, Oliver Twist, Sitting on Paradise, Peter Pan, The Clean House (set and lights), numerous Enbridge playRites Festivals, Treasure Island, Amadeus, Marion Bridge (set and lights), Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And The Collected Works of Billy the Kid. Selected design credits include: The Cunning Little Vixen, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Dido & Aeneas (The Banff Centre – Opera Program); Losing Ground (The Banff Centre – Dance Program); Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, Seven Deadly Sins & Songs of a Wayfarer, Requiem (Alberta Ballet/Edmonton Opera); Mom's The Word, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (Theatre Calgary), A Raisin In The Sun (Theatre Calgary/Soulpepper Theatre Company), Crimes of the Heart (Theatre Calgary/MTC), And Then There Were None, Rebecca, Evelyn Strange, Blood Relations, Noirville (Vertigo Theatre), The Inventors [projection design], Little Women, Dead Man Walking and Faust (Calgary Opera).
April Viczko - Costume Design
Selected credits: production design for Backwater (Windrow Performance), Hello… Hello (Kill Your Television), set and costume design for Bea’s Niece (Tarragon), As You Like It (Citadel Theatre) and Stray (Workshop West), costumes for The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (Birdland Theatre – Dora Nomination), costume design for This Castle with Moonhorse Dance Theatre, Blackbird and True Love Lies (Citadel Theatre). Recently for the University of Calgary Drama Department: King Lear and Perfect Pie. In 2006, April shared the Siminovitch Protégé Prize awarded by Dany Lyne. Currently, April is a Vice-President of the Associated Designers of Canada. She is also a faculty member in the Department of Drama at the University of Calgary.
Angie Wong - Lin
Angie is excited and honoured to be working for ATP for the first time since graduating from Mount Royal University’s Theatre Performance Program. Thinking of Yu will be Angie’s debut in the professional theatre community of Calgary and she is eager to work with such as exciting and talented cast and crew. Credits include: Shakespeare Unbound, Suddenly Last Summer, and The Gift of the Coat (MRU). Angie thanks all of her friends, family and classmates who continue to support her in theatre and all areas of creation and art.