Coming Up
(Updated March 1, 2008)

Horny Tories hit on the Queen of the Kawarthas!

	Jason Jazrawy and Richard Lee in Conservatives in Love. Photo by Philip Cygan.

Conservatives in Love is a sex farce with tragic overtones – could right-wing amour be anything else? When Sue Miner directed the premiere production for Pea Green Theatre at the Toronto Fringe Festival, the entire run at the Miles Nadal JCC sold out. The play was remounted at the Next Stage Festival, in the Mainspace of Factory Theatre, over the first two weeks of January 2008 and, again, it sold out. The cast includes Marie Beath Badian, Jason Jazrawy, Richard Lee, and Anne Page. Nina Okens is the costume genius; Hilary Unger is the unflappable stage manager.

And now Conservatives in Love is going to the Lift Lock City, The Electric City, The Queen of the Kawarthas – yes, Peterborough – with the same cast, same mayhem. Except it’s all going to be playing out at the corner of George and Charlotte, right underneath the clock.

Peterborough is currently represented by a Liberal provincially (Jeff Leal) and, federally, Dean Del Mastro, a Conservative. When Dave was young and less idealistic, he served in the Young Liberals with Mr. Leal. Neither Dave nor anyone in the cast has ever met Mr. Del Mastro, though they all hope to during the run of the play. It is not known as of the date of this posting if the very conservative Mr. Del M has/is/will be in love.

New Stages, the head artistic honcho of which is that paragon of good taste, Randy Read, is hosting the production at the Market Hall Theatre.

Dates are April 17 – 25, most nights at 8 pm and including a Sunday matinee on the 20th.

For tickets – call the ShowPlace box office at (705) 742-7469 or 1-866-444-2154. Tickets can also be purchased online at www.showplace.org

NNNNN - Best of the Fringe, Best New Play, Best Acting Ensemble, and Best Director. - NOW Magazine

Totally engaging and entertaining… The cast are wonderful - Jon Kaplan, NOW Magazine

Smart, sexy and silly. Bravo to director Sue Miner. - Glenn Sumi, NOW Magazine

4 STARS - A hilarious satire of Canadian conservatives performed by an outstanding cast. - EYE Magazine

Rose City Writers

Dave and his periodic partner-in-writing-crime, Glenda MacFarlane, have been teaching an advanced writing workshop for new playwrights, in conjunction with Brampton’s Rose Theatre and A.C.T. Productions. The workshops are culminating in a public reading/performance at the Rose Theatre, in the afternoon of April 12, 2008. Come and hear our protégés – they’re really good!

For further information, contact A.C.T. Productions’ office: 905-793-3017.

5 Hot Plays

Dave is editing a new volume of plays, which is being published by Playwrights Canada Press, and launching in May.

Five of the best new plays by young writers to grace Toronto’s stages are being included in this volume, which will include a forward by Dave and a cover by Toronto’s hottest designer, Stephane Monnet. The plays and playwrights are:

Oonagh Duncan – Talk Thirty To Me
Paul Dunn – Offensive Shadows
Daniel Karasiuk – In Full Light
Hannah Moscovitch – The Russian Play
Michael Rubenfeld - Spain

Walking on Water

Michael Waller is directing another production of this play, at London’s Fanshawe College, with their graduating class. Michael has directed two previous productions of the play, at Peterborough Showplace and Ryerson University. The Fanshawe production runs in mid-April at the Fanshawe College Theatre Arts Studio.

Writers Trust in Peterborough

Dave is conducting a one day workshop at the Peterborough Public Library for the Writers Trust of Canada. The date is Saturday, April 19. The Writers Trust is sponsoring this event.

For further information, contact the Peterborough Public Library at 705-745-5560.

Workshop at 4th Line

Dave will be at 4th Line Theatre a week later, on April 26, teaching another course on playwriting. This session will be more practical than theoretical, and will offer tips and help in breaking in, beating writer’s block and including as much demystification of the whole process as can be sandwiched into two hours. Here’s the official description:

Pitfalls and Progress – the Practice of Playwriting

Apart from the overuse of alliteration, there are many obstacles in the path of a playwright looking to get produced. This two hour seminar will look at a number of practical approaches to getting productions, as well as address a wide-ranging cluster of related professional issues. If you are finding yourself stymied or road-blocked or even wondering if playwriting is a viable outlet for your talents, this session could be very useful.

For further information, contact 4th Line at 705-932-4505.

Summer Comes Early

It’s summer at a grand old family cottage in the Kawarthas. Cousins Adele and Jean, now in their 70’s, are living both in the present and in the past, remembering the sexy young man who washed up on their dock one summer before World War II. After You is a warm examination of innocence lost, wisdom gained and the endurance of friendship. It premiered a number of years ago at Alberta Theatre Projects as Kawartha, and has been produced a number of times since then, including a wonderful production in Peterborough starring the late Charmion King. More recently it was featured at Alumnae Theatre, directed by Jane Carnwath. And now it is playing Pottery Road…

"Funny and poignant" (The Globe and Mail)

"A finely nuanced memory play … compassionately laying bare the truth we hide from ourselves as well as from others." (NOW)

"When intelligence and wit collide with sensuality and animal magnetism, fascinating theatre is the result. After You shimmers with a vitality rarely captured in contemporary productions that tackle complex issues unabashed, head on and with no apologies." (Peterborough Examiner)

After You runs May 22 to June 7 at the East Side Players theatre at Todmorden Mills (Pottery Road). For tickets, call 416-425-0917, or tickets@eastsideplayers.ca, or through TO Tix at www.totix.ca

Fringe One! Opera on the Rocks…

Opera on the Rocks composer David Ogborn.

Opera on the Rocks – that operatic look at lust and sports set in a pub which is having its premiere in January – is coming to the Toronto Fringe.

Artist collective The Ambient Opera Society presents Opera on the Rocks. Witness guerilla opera while enjoying a pint – no formal wear required!

The all-star team of librettists are Leanna Brodie (Schoolhouse), Dave Carley (Conservatives in Love), Lisa Codrington (Cast Iron) and Krista Dalby (We Need Help!).

Music is composed and performed by renowned sound artist David Ogborn (Metropolis, Street Songs) using a physically and electronically modified classical guitar, played with a variety of unusual accessories, including a set of kitchen knives.

Director is Liza Balkan.

Opera on the Rocks features Alex Dobson, Carla Huhtanen, Keith Klassen, and Jessica Lloyd.

Opera on the Rocks has been generously supported by the Canadian Music Centre’s New Music in New Places program.

Website: http://operaontherocks.ca

Fringe Dates: July 2-13 at Paupers Pub. Most performances will be at 9 pm.

Here’s what NOW Magazine said about the first incarnation of Opera on the Rocks in early January.

Opera on the Rocks review – NOW – Thursday, Jan 10/08

High-Cs karaoke

Hockey on the big screen and drunken pickups are part of life at your average sports bar but aren’t usually part of an operatic quartet or a tenor-soprano exchange.
But song was the means of communication in Opera On The Rocks, the Ambient Opera Society’s two-night workshop held earlier this week at Pauper’s.

Clever writing by librettists Leanna Brodie, Dave Carley, Lisa Codrington and Krista Dalby kept the action moving, set to live music by composer David Ogborn that included a guitar played with, among other implements, a set of kitchen knives.

Moving around the bar and interacting with the audience – at opening, writer/performer Marcia Johnson got pulled into the action more than once – the cast got into the rough-and-ready spirit of the show, calling for a line when someone forgot the text.

Tying the show together was tenor Keith Klassen’s wannabe karaoke singer, becoming drunker and drunker over the course of the show and offering the evening’s biggest laugh. When mezzo Jessica Lloyd blew a whistle at his come-ons, becoming the ref to his offsides hockey player, he stopped the show by complaining, “I can’t hear my pitch!”

Rounding out the cast were baritone Alex Dobson and soprano Carla Huhtanen, the latter especially impressive as a rhyming server who kept delivering arpeggios to a customer who didn’t want to leave at last call.

Another highlight in the evening’s eight brief episodes was the face-to-face confrontation of two people who met through Lava Life. After finding that each has lied online about their appearance, they discover that reeling off a litany of Maple Leafs team members makes for a torrid seduction.

If you didn’t get to the show, you’ll probably have a chance during next summer’s Fringe. The company hopes to remount Opera On The Rocks as a BYOV, again at Pauper’s.

It’s a great way to bring the beer tent into the theatre proper.

Fringe Two! Taking Liberties…

	The postcard from the original Toronto production of Taking Liberties, directed by Stephen Ouimette, and starring Dixie Seatle, Michael Caruana, Stephanie Morgenstern, Tom McCamus and Gary Reineke. Artwork by Bonnie Howells.

Our civil liberties are under constant attack - but this is nothing new. The challenges we face today all have their roots in the struggles of yesterday.

Taking Liberties examines five critical moments in the life of a city, from the present day back to 1955. At every turn, ordinary citizens are forced to make extraordinary choices, showing how the moral dilemmas of one era can impact on the events of another.

The play consists of five monologues: a professor under attack for her stand on affirmative action; a young Jewish lawyer who is shunned by his family for defending a holocaust denier; a high school student who demands that a controversial novel remain on her school's curriculum; and a newspaper editor who must decide how much free speech his paper will allow. Finally there is the story of the man who ties their lives together - a homosexual accountant who sets out on an agonized stroll through the city looking for the love that is not even mentioned, let alone tolerated, in his otherwise postcard-perfect 1950s city.

"Beautifully written. Taking Liberties creates identifiable human figures who face agonisingly real problems. It's rare for theatre audiences to be so intellectually and emotionally challenged." (Plays International)

"The play is thoughtful and as topical as today's headlines… It is enriched with complications that are the stuff of human drama. They support (Carley's) points on the danger in prevailing orthodoxies, whose "correctness" is as mutable as a virus." (Vancouver Sun)

"Touches upon the principal quandary of our age - rights and responsibilities are ultimately about one person's control over others - and makes it both abstract and terrifyingly immediate. It pounds on the doors of both the mind and the heart." (Theatrum)

The cast for Taking Liberties is now set, and it’s an amazing one: David Fox, Karen Knox, Richard Lee Michael Rubenfeld and Dixie Seatle. Nina Okens is doing costumes. And Dave Carley is directing.

Taking Liberties will run from Wednesday, July 2 to Sunday, July 13.


The Taming of the Dude

Dave and Glenda MacFarlane have collaborated on a number of projects and now they are bringing their comedic skills and abiding reverence for W. Shakespeare to Brampton. The Taming of the Dude is a gender-reversed version of The Taming of the Shrew. Three young men are in desperate need of reformation and three young women have every intention of civilizing them. But maybe it isn’t that easy to do a dude-makeover in Brampton, 2008?

The premiere of The Taming of the Dude will be at The Rose Theatre in July, directed by David Phillips. Performance dates and box office information will be posted here soon.

The Edible Woman

While you are in Brampton booking your tickets for The Taming of the Dude, you can catch a performance of ReverieMOD Productions’ The Edible Woman, at Cyril Clark Library.

Playwright in Residence - Shaw Festival

With the support of The Shaw Festival and Toronto Arts Council, Dave has been writing a new play on the last day in the life of the Danish playwright/martyr Kaj Munk. Dave is currently the Shaw Festival in the fall as playwright-in-residence, courtesy of the Ontario Arts Council. While there, he will be completing new drafts of Kaj Munk.

Niels Ebbesen (by Kaj Munk)

Dave has just completed both a new translation and a translation/adaptation of this play by the famous Danish playwright, in conjunction with Kaj Munk’s granddaughter, Arense Lund. Both versions of the play, along with a short biography of Kaj Munk and Niels Ebbesen, are available on this website, in the Plays section. Dave is also currently working with Arense Lund on a translation of another Munk work, Ordet (The Word).

Ordet (by Kaj Munk)

The second translation project Dave is undertaking with Arense Lund is Ordet (The Word). This is perhaps Kaj Munk’s best known work, and a film version by Carl Dreyer won the 1955 Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. Ordet is the story of two families of deep religious conviction; fundamentalist and liberal, and their conflicting views of the power of miracles. In Europe, new productions of Ordet are being presented at the Royal Copenhagen Theatre, as well as in Odense and Paris, in the coming months.

Hedges

School productions are happening from Hamilton to Lethbridge. Hedges is short play, written for younger actors, exposing Canada’s ongoing role in the international arms race. For more information on Canada’s increasing role in the international arms race, go to the website of the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT) at www.coat.ncf.ca

The text for Hedges is available on this website – see Plays.

Other Publications and writing

Just out: Playwrights Canada Press has just included Dave’s work in two anthologies. He Speaks: Monologues for Men (David Ferry, editor) includes Gerald Harvie’s monologue from Taking Liberties. PCP’s Canada On Stage (Iris Turcott and Keith Turnbull, editors) features Lee Kwan’s monologue from Walking on Water. See also the Fall issue of CanPlay, which includes a profile of Dave of playwright Hannah Moscovitch.

Coming soon: Dave’s play on Canada’s involvement in the international arms race, Hedges, is being published in a Scirocco anthology for young audiences, due out in the Fall of 2008.

Script Editing and Dramaturgy

Dave continues to occasionally script edit at CBC, and is currently working on two projects: a series pilot by Wendy Lill entitled The Backbenchers and an hour-long musical by Thom Fitzgerald, Vaudevillians.

Dave is also directing workshops developing a new play by Marie Beath Badian for Roseneath Theatre. Marie Beath’s play is entitled The Making of St. Jerome and it is based on the shooting of Jeffrey Redoica, a few years ago in Scarborough.

Friends of Freddy

It would be piggish to not include advance notice of what will surely be the social highlight of 2008 – the bi-annual Friends of Freddy convention at the Winter Clove Inn in the Catskills, New York. The convention dates are September 12-15. Join Dave and other friends of The Pig for this weekend celebration of the work of Walter R. Brooks, including a Survivor-style determination of the ‘Best Freddy book ever’. For more information on Friends of Freddy, go the organization’s website at
www.freddythepig.org