by EuripidesA new version by Anne CarsonDirector Jillian Keiley
POWER. UNBOUND.
Awakening savage frenzy in the women of Thebes, the god of wine, ecstasy and fertility lays bare the duality of our natures: that each of us, no matter how civilized, has a wild beast within.
Audience Advisory: This production includes sexuality, eroticism, violence and other mature themes and might not be suitable for some audiences.
Production support is generously provided by M.E.H. Foundation.
Support for the 2017 season of the Tom Patterson Theatre is generously provided by Richard Rooney & Laura Dinner.
2017: Maria in Twelfth Night and Agave in Bakkhai. Celebrating 30 seasons. "Since arriving at the Festival from the National Theatre School in 1984, I have performed in over 70 shows with a cameo appearance in my two best and most rewarding productions: our sons, Harrison and Benjamin, who are now on their own journeys as theatre artists. I have learned about Life and Art through the lens of some of the greatest stories ever told. To everyone who has travelled alongside me on these beautiful stages, to my fellow Actors, to the Artistic Directors and Staff, Musicians, Composers, Directors, Designers, Stage Crews, Dressers, Stage Managers, and Coaches, to You, the witnesses of our Love's Labours, to my Friends and Family, to my husband, Christopher, and our beautiful sons … Thank you. 'My affection hath an unknown bottom, like the Bay of Portugal.'"
2017: Tieresias in Bakkhai, Orgon in Tartuffe and associate director of Twelfth Night. 18th season. Stratford: Bolingbroke/Henry IV, conceiver, adaptor, associate director (Breath of Kings), Philip the Bastard (King John), Iago (Othello), Posthumus (Cymbeline), Henry V, Macbeth, Romeo, Henry VIII, Jaques, Prince Hal, D'Artagnan (Three Musketeers), Petruchio (Shrew), Aufidius (Coriolanus), Berowne (Love's Labour's Lost), Algernon (Earnest). Elsewhere: Hamlet (Resurgence); Jeff Skilling (Enron) (Theatre Calgary); Sam Byck (Assassins) (Talk Is Free/Birdland); Charles (The School for Scandal) (Chicago Shakespeare). TV: Series lead: The Border. Recurring: Degrassi, Murdoch Mysteries, Covert Affairs, Republic of Doyle. Guest star: Flashpoint, Lost Girl, Rookie Blue, Warehouse 13, Bomb Girls, Remedy. Film: Take This Waltz, Casino Jack, Defendor, Stealing Paradise, Angels and Ornaments, Milton's Secret, Frontier. Radio: Afghanada (CBC). Awards: Dora, Monte Carlo Television Festival nomination. Directing: The Winter's Tale, Measure for Measure (Groundling). Et cetera: Artistic Director, Groundling Theatre. Incoming Artistic Director, Festival Players of Prince Edward County (festivalplayers.ca).
2017: Fabian in Twelfth Night, Pentheus in Bakkhai and Laurent in Tartuffe. 11th season. Stratford: Last season, he appeared as multiple characters in Breath of Kings. Other credits include Biondello in The Taming of the Shrew, Williams in Possible Worlds, Scrub in The Beaux' Stratagem, Andrei in Three Sisters, Apollodorus in Caesar and Cleopatra, Roderigo in Othello and Flaminius in Timon of Athens. Elsewhere: Mr. Collins in Pride and Prejudice, Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood (Globe Theatre); Krogstad in A Doll's House (Montgomery/TNB). Film/TV: Dmitri in the award-winning miniseries Fargo (Season 1; Best Miniseries: Emmy, Golden Globe), Suits, Republic of Doyle, The Ron James Show, Warehouse 13, Lost Girl. Training: National Theatre School of Canada; Birmingham Conservatory for Classical Theatre. Awards: Tyrone Guthrie Award (2003, 2007), John Hirsch Award (2004) and the inaugural recipient of the Richard Monette Travel Grant (2009).
2017: Viola in Twelfth Night, member of the Bakkhai in Bakkhai and understudy in Tartuffe. Sixth season. Stratford: Lady Macduff, Macbeth; Ann Deever, All My Sons; Mrs. Fanny Wilton, John Gabriel Borkman; Player Queen, Hamlet; Bianca, The Taming of the Shrew; Rosaline, Love's Labour's Lost; Tiger Lily, Alice Through the Looking-Glass; featured, A Midsummer Night's Dream: A Chamber Play; Mariana, Measure for Measure; Mary Stuart; Elektra; The Pirates of Penzance. Elsewhere: Small Axe (Project Humanity/The Theatre Centre); Margaret, Much Ado About Nothing; Octavia/Iras, Antony and Cleopatra (Bard on the Beach); Macbeth: nach Shakespeare (Conspiracy/Gas Heart); Saint Monica, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (Pound of Flesh/Pacific Theatre). Film/TV: iZombie, Smallville, Caprica, Eureka, The Perfect Score, American Dreams. Recordings: Days of Old (Neworld Theatre/CBC). Training: Birmingham Conservatory; BFA Acting, UBC; Lyric School of Acting. Awards: Mary Savidge Award, Artistic Director's Award (Stratford). Online: @SarahAfful1. Et cetera: Thank you, Father.
2017: Member of the Bakkhai in Bakkhai and Mme Pernelle in Tartuffe. Fifth season. Stratford: Madame Armfeldt, A Little Night Music; Celia, As You Like It; Helena, A Midsummer Night's Dream; Stella, A Streetcar Named Desire. Elsewhere (selected): Toronto: Late Company, Tom at the Farm, Festen, Tout Comme Elle, The New Electric Ballroom, Glass Menagerie. Montreal: Wit, Glorious, Long Day's Journey Into Night. She also works as a theatre director across the country. Film/TV: Orphan Black (Susan Duncan), Between; appeared in over 100 films/TV series. Favourite roles include Katherine Brooke (Anne of Green Gables), title role in Mom PI. Upcoming: The Hive. Online: Guidestones, Ruby Skye PI. Awards: Dora, Masque, ACTRA Award, ACTRA Nellie, London Telegraph Best Fringe Performance, Maclean's Honour Roll. Et cetera: She teaches at NTS, Canadian Film Centre and many others. She is grateful for a long, varied, rewarding career and glad to be back at the Festival.
2017: Guard in Bakkhai and Thom in The Virgin Trial. Sixth season. Stratford: Maugrim in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Ned in Shakespeare in Love, Marlow in She Stoops to Conquer, Edmund in King Lear, Starveling in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Cassio in Othello, O'Kelly in Mary Stuart and appeared in The Diary of Anne Frank, Oedipus Rex, The Beaux' Stratagem, Measure for Measure, Cymbeline, Elektra. Elsewhere: Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet (Neptune); Darcy in Pride and Prejudice (Grand); Paul in Hail (RCAT); Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch (c2c); Sin in Fear of Flight (Artistic Fraud). Directing: Fleeto (Tiny Room), Henry IV Part 1, Caesar, A Midsummer Night's Dream (Perchance); Leisure Society, Autobahn, Stendhal Syndrome (c2c). Associate directing: Measure for Measure, Winter's Tale (Groundling). Film/TV: Reign (CW); Republic of Doyle, Diverted, Above and Beyond (CBC). Training: BFA (Acting), University of Alberta; Birmingham Conservatory.
2017: Servant in Bakkhai and Parry in The Virgin Trial. Fifth season. Stratford: Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Peter van Daan in The Diary of Anne Frank, Motel in Fiddler on the Roof, Diggory in She Stoops to Conquer, Mother Courage and Her Children, King John, Romeo and Juliet. Elsewhere: John in The Lion in Winter (The Grand); Fenton in The Merry Wives of Windsor (Theatre by the Bay); Henry in Next to Normal (Clearwater Theatre). Training: George Brown Theatre School, Birmingham Conservatory. Online: Twitter @Andre_P_Morin. Et cetera: "Much love to all my friends and family, and many thanks to Mom, Dad, Alex, Daniel, Grandma, Caroline, Frank and Shari."
2017: Orsino in Twelfth Night, Herdsman in Bakkhai and Officer in Tartuffe. Seventh season. Stratford: Seyton (Macbeth), Dr. Jim Bayliss (All My Sons), Juan Murillo (The Physicists), Thaliard, Leonine (Pericles), Eilif (Mother Courage), Melun (King John), Alexas (Antony and Cleopatra), Bellievre (Mary Stuart), Abhorson (Measure for Measure), Cymbeline, Elektra. Elsewhere: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., The Mountaintop (Grand); Big Sam, Gone With the Wind (RMTC); Seyton, Macbeth; Friar Laurence, Romeo and Juliet (Chicago Shakespeare); Macduff, Macbeth (First Folio Theatre); King, King Hedley II (Karamu); Moustique, Dream on Monkey Mountain; Junior, Before It Hits Home; Cleveland Play House; Idaho Shakespeare Festival; Theater Wit, Chicago; The Great Lakes Theater Festival. Film/TV: The Beast (Sony), Ask Gilby, Maybe By Then, Thunder Bay. Training: Ohio University, Birmingham Conservatory. Et cetera: E.B. would like to dedicate his work to his parents and grandmother, and to the memory of his Papa, who will always be in the front row.
Translator of Bakkhai.
Anne Carson is a poet, essayist, translator, playwright and classicist. Her translation of Sophokles' Antigone recently received its world première at Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg/Barbican, London, starring Juliette Binoche and directed by Ivo van Hove; her new translation of Euripides' The Bakkhai, directed by James Macdonald and starring Ben Whishaw, recently premièred at the Almeida Theatre in London. Classic Stage Company in New York has produced Anne's An Orchestra (a trilogy adapted from Aeschylus' Agamemnon, Sophokles' Electra, and Euripides' Orestes) in repertory. Her latest book, Float, was published in 2016. Other works include Autobiography of Red; Red Doc; Antigonick; Nox; If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (translation); The Beauty of the Husband; Men in the Off Hours; Economy of the Unlost; Plainwater: Essays and Poetry; Glass, Irony and God; Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay; Decreation: Poetry, Essays, Opera; and Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides (translation). Carson is a MacArthur Fellow; a recipient of the Lannan Prize, the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Pushcart Prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize (twice-awarded); and an Anna-Maria Kellen Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin.
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