Artword double bill – Theatre +, May 23
Artword Theatre presents “Theatre +”, a theatrical double-bill based on two fascinating texts. Saturday May 23 at 8:00 pm $10 at the door.
at The Pearl Company, 16 Steven Street.
#1: “One Night, the Rain”, a theatrical adaptation created and performed by actress Aktina Stathaki and pianist Jerome Simeon based on a short story “Maria dos Prazeres” by G.G. Marquez. Maria, a 70-year-old prostitute, is haunted by a dream that she is going to die soon, until one night… Chorus: Paula Grove, Valeri Kay, Tanis MacArthur.
#2: “Langston Hughes vs Joe McCarthy”. Is poetry subversive? In 1953 U.S. Senator Joe McCarthy thought so. Directed by Ronald Weihs, this reading is based on testimony from the US Committee hearing and the poems of renowned Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. Performed by the Artword Theatre Ensemble. A remount of Artword’s Black History month presentation.
“One Night, the Rain”:
Director/performer Aktina Stathaki and pianist/composer Jerome Simeon perform “One Night, the Rain”, their theatrical adaptation of the short story “Maria dos Prazeres” by Colombian writer and Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
Aktina and Jerome have formed a company to create original performance from short stories, testimonies, poetry, and scientific texts. They explore the techniques of storytelling and theatre, combined with dance, improvisation, and live music. Aktina explains their approach: “We represent our multicultural environment, the languages we speak, our cultural backgrounds, our approach to the arts. We want to create cross-culturally, with texts that represent aesthetic styles and thematic concerns from the whole world.”
Aktina Stathaki has worked as an actress with the National Theatre of Greece (where she also studied acting). In Toronto she performed in “Market of Tales”, an Artword Theatre and AfriCan Theatre Ensemble production directed by Ronald Weihs, and has worked with trey anthony productions. For the Graduate Centre for Study of Drama at University of Toronto, she has directed Lorca’s “The Love of Don Perlimplin and Belisa in the Garden” and “The Song of Arete”, a devised performance based on a Greek folk poem. Jerome Simeon is a pianist and composer. He has worked as a free-lance musician in his hometown Paris and in New York where he currently lives.
