Aaron performs on stilts as Frankie in Little War written by Glyn Bowerman

Cyclops Squad (Clay & Paper Theatre)

Squad includes: David Anderson, Ange Loft, Renna Reddie, Natalie Morgan, and Aaron Rothermund

Out amongst the community bake-ovens and lush gardens of Dufferin Grove Park, Clay and Paper Theatre has been changing the world. Completely. Irrevocably. Medieval mystery plays, Punch and Judy shows, African myths, Indonesian shadow puppetry, Native Canadian masks - all these and more have been influencing Clay and Paper Theatre Company since its birth in 1994. This is theatre on the ground, for the groundlings, in the park and on the street. This is theatre of exaggeration, of giant puppetry, of satire and wit gone awry. This is a little theatre company asking big questions with humour and irreverence. This is Clay and Paper Theatre.

Clay & Paper’s new bicycle-based theatre project Cyclops: Cycling Oriented Puppet Squad, is a mobile performance squad that animates and energizes environmental and cycling events across Toronto from May to August, bringing theatre and cycling enthusiasm to the unsuspecting public.

As we take our unique brand of theatre to the streets, we develop new performance venues and enliven Toronto ’s public spaces while drawing attention to urban environmental issues and promoting active living. Thanks to funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, Cyclops will be bringing the bicycle revolution to the city for the next 3 summers!

Pentheus reviewed by Robert Cushman (National Post)

Theatre Review: City of Wine

Posted: May 08, 2009, 1:32 PM by Maryam Siddiqi

toronto, Art and Culture, post toronto, theatre, 

By Robert Cushman, National Post

The Greeks with their all-day tragic festivals didn’t just invent drama. They invented the dramatic cycle, the experience of sitting in a theatre for a long time following one proliferating story. So it’s natural that later playwrights planning marathons should turn to the same material. Ned Dickens, an otherwise untried writer, has devoted seven plays, and 16 years of his life, to retelling the tale of Thebes, a sex-and-blood-drenched saga that peaks in the story of Oedipus but starts generations earlier. All seven are now being mounted in sequence in Toronto, in a kind of super-workshop, by seven different theatre schools from around the country, under the auspices of the professional company Nightswimming. It’s a dizzyingly ambitious feat of producing and, despite inevitable unevenness in writing and production, a dizzying achievement.

Pentheus (from Humber), the second play and the most impressive of the five I saw in preview this week, shows us the founding couple advanced in years and disillusion as their town, and especially its women, are possessed by the newly born god Dionysus, here called — with surprising inconsistency — by his Roman name of Bacchus. He brings wine, which becomes the city’s staple product and cultural identity; the lower orders are especially fond of it. This is the story told in Euripides’ Bacchae, culminating in the dismembering of Pentheus, the immature new king, by his own crazed mother.  

The plays are written in verse, mainly blank: a sensible decision, but a perilous one. Iambic pentameter is an inherently conversational medium, but no dramatists since the Elizabethans have been able to use it unselfconsciously. When Dickens feels a lyrical lament coming on, the air turns fanciful and unconvincing. But he can also hack out a biting one-liner; when Pentheus calls the gods “pathetic pouting mockeries of man” he has a point, especially about Bacchus. They’re us at our worst, irresponsible because immortal. Ancient Greek theology is terrifying and convincing.

The stagings vary in style and accomplishment. Many actors double as musicians. One play features a hero who plays the lyre, which seems to be what we moderns call a mouth organ. Another features a Ukrainian folk band. A third obscures much vital exposition, by singing it over clangorous homemade accompaniment. Some directors put their performers in exposed positions, physically and emotionally, without giving them much support. But one production, Tatiana Jennings’ Humber Pentheus, is astonishing, from its initial display of rhythmically shuffling divinities, chanting in amplified whispers. It has a sound score by the great Richard Feren, and choreography (by Sharon Moore) whose hypnotically measured frenzy helps both author and actors to go head to head with Euripides’ masterpiece and survive. Its Bacchus (Aaron Rothermund) is properly, and unnervingly, faun-like, while if there were a professional production tomorrow this Pentheus (Colin Bruce Anthes), rash, uptight, spooked by sexual uncertainty, could go into it undaunted and unchanged.

City of Wine closes May 9 at Theatre Passe Muraille. For details, call 416-504-7529.

[The production of City of Wine involved 165 actors and artists. Photo by John Lauener.] 

Aaron Rothermund stars in Pentheus

Pentheus explores the dark side of the Gods. 

Humber Theatre presents the world premiere of this classic Greek tragedy.

Written by Ned Dickens &
Directed by Tatiana Jennings

Set and Lighting Design by Stephan Droege
Costume design - Anna Romanovska
Choreography - Sharon Moore
Stage Management - Maria Costa

Performances are as follows:
Saturday, April 11th - Saturday, April 18th, 8pm

Aaron Rothermund stars in A Field Guide to Fevers and Curses/Humber Theatre

A Field Guide to Fevers and Curses
is the second production of the Humber 08-09 season.

Directed by Karin Randoja & Raymond Bobgan
Set & Costume Design by Kelly Wolf
Lighting Design by Laird Macdonald
Stage Management by Maria Costa

Friday, Feb. 6th, 8pm
Saturday, Feb. 7th, 8pm
Sunday, Feb. 8th, 2pm
Tuesday, Feb. 10th, 8pm
Wednesday, Feb. 11th, 8pm
Thursday, Feb. 12th, 8pm
Friday, Feb. 13th, 8pm
Saturday, Feb. 14th, 2pm
Saturday, Feb. 14th, 8pm