Body & Soul- What would you say in a letter to your body?
Thirteen months after a sold-out 10-show run, esteemed Canadian playwright and director Judith Thompson, in collaboration with a team involved in the original production, remounts Body & Soul, a powerful and provocative play that astonished and moved audiences in its original incarnation as 13 real women took to the stage at the Young Centre and bravely told their own stories within a highly theatrical structure, beautifully underscored with original live music. Now this groundbreaking production returns, this time for a two-and-a-half week run at Tarragon Theatre’s Extra Space, opening June 6 and running through to June 21 (previewing June 4 and 5).
In a celebration of the ’second act’ of a woman’s life, 12 real women from across the country, between the ages of 46 and 79, with no previous acting experience, share their life stories. Under Thompson’s tutelage - as a writer and a director - their passions, their traumas, their dreams and their joys pour affectingly onto the stage; and in so doing challenge society’s precepts about women, beauty and aging.
“Raw and unpolished and extraordinary in their ordinariness, I embraced this beautiful gamble with these beautiful women,” said Thompson, “and they surpassed my expectations.” Eleven of the 13 women return from the original production, which was commissioned by Dove in 2007. A wonderful new woman has been cast - and all 12 will go back to the rehearsal hall and refine and create anew a play that, as standing ovations night after night proved, connects powerfully with its audience as it explores the worlds of aging women.
This time around Thompson and a small team from the original production, under the name Thompson and Fine, have taken the reins and are producing Body & Soul themselves, inspired to continue to validate the stories of mature women, celebrate their diverse beauty and illustrate that as the body ages, the soul can shine through and bloom with a beautiful brilliance.
These brave women are business women, teachers, ex-nuns, award-winning writers, hairstylists, caregivers, adventurers, mothers and grandmothers who originally responded to Dove’s nation-wide audition call to write a letter to their bodies. After a thorough audition process, the final cast was chosen and the work began. In the course of two intensive workshops, Thompson encouraged the women to reveal themselves and tell all the stories they wanted to tell; then, over the year, she crafted and shaped the play from the breath-taking life stories she heard.
tickets.tarragontheatre.com
Judith Thompson is one of the world’s most thought-provoking playwrights and certainly no stranger to the role of challenging society’s views. Her plays have been performed all over the world and studied by English and theatre departments everywhere. She has been named Officer of the Order of Canada and received the 2007 Walter Carsen Prize, two Governor General’s Awards, two Chalmers Awards and most recently, the prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for her play, Palace of the End. A 53-year-old mother of five, she and her family reside in Toronto. She is a writer for both stage and screen, a stage director, an actress and a Professor of Theatre Studies at the University of Guelph. Her plays include Palace of the End, Perfect Pie, Lion In The Streets, Crackwalker, White Biting Dog, I Am Yours, Habitat, Sled and Enoch Arden in the Hope Shelter. She has written two feature films, Lost and Delirious and Perfect Pie, as well as many radio plays and movies of the week. Body & Soul is Thompson’s first collective creation.
Thompson and Fine present Body & Soul
Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, 30 Bridgman Avenue
Previews June 4 and 5, Opens June 6 and runs to June 21, 2009
Tuesday-Saturday at 8pm; Sunday at 2:30 pm
Tickets: $35 (Discounts for seniors and students weekdays & limited rush tickets Friday at $10)
For tickets and reservations: Call 416-531-1827 or
