Soulpepper Theatre Company
Encyclopedia
Soulpepper Theatre Company is a Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...

, Ontario
Ontario
Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

-based theatre company
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

 dedicated to presenting classic plays.

History

Soulpepper was founded in 1998 by twelve Toronto artists who dreamed of a company that would produce lesser known theatrical classics. Soulpepper has since become an important part of Toronto's theatre scene. It often presents Canadian interpretations of works by such noted playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

s as Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...

, Thornton Wilder
Thornton Wilder
Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He received three Pulitzer Prizes, one for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and two for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a National Book Award for his novel The Eighth Day.-Early years:Wilder was born in Madison,...

, Samuel Beckett
Samuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

, Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...

 and Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics...

. The current artistic director is Albert Schultz
Albert Schultz
Albert Schultz is a Canadian actor, director and the founding artistic director of Toronto's celebrated Soulpepper Theatre Company.-Education:...

.

László Marton
László Marton
László Marton is a contemporary theatre director. Marton is the artistic director of the Vígszínház and professor of the University of Theatre, Film and Television in Budapest...

, artistic director of the Vígszínház in Budapest
Budapest
Budapest is the capital of Hungary. As the largest city of Hungary, it is the country's principal political, cultural, commercial, industrial, and transportation centre. In 2011, Budapest had 1,733,685 inhabitants, down from its 1989 peak of 2,113,645 due to suburbanization. The Budapest Commuter...

, Hungary and one of the most important contemporary theatre directors, has had numerous productions over the years at Soulpepper: Molnár's The Play's the Thing (1999, 2003), Chekhov's Platonov
Platonov (play)
Platonov is the name in English given to an early, untitled play written in Russian by Anton Chekhov in 1878. It was the first large-scale drama by Chekhov written specifically for Maria Yermolova, rising star of Maly Theatre...

 (1999, 2000), Chekhov's Uncle Vanya
Uncle Vanya
Uncle Vanya is a play by the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. It was first published in 1897 and received its Moscow première in 1899 in a production by the Moscow Art Theatre, under the direction of Konstantin Stanislavski....

 (2001, 2002), Feydeau's A Flea in Her Ear
A Flea in Her Ear
A Flea in Her Ear is a play by Georges Feydeau written in 1907, at the height of the Belle Époque.-Plot:...

 (2001), and Ibsen's The Wild Duck
The Wild Duck
The Wild Duck is an 1884 play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen.-Plot:The first act opens with a dinner party hosted by Håkon Werle, a wealthy merchant and industrialist. The gathering is attended by his son, Gregers Werle, who has just returned to his father's home following a self-imposed...

 (2005).

Soulpepper's founding members are Martha Burns
Martha Burns
Martha Burns is an award-winning Canadian actress known for her stage work and youth outreach in Ontario and her leading role as Ellen Fanshaw in the TV dramedy series Slings and Arrows.Burns was born 1958 in Winnipeg, Manitoba...

, Susan Coyne
Susan Coyne
Susan Coyne is a Canadian writer and actress, best known as one of the co-creators and co-stars of the award-winning Slings and Arrows, a TV series which ran 2003–06 about a Canadian Shakespearean theatre company...

, Ted Dykstra, Michael Hanrahan, Stuart Hughes
Stuart Hughes
Stuart Hughes is a Canadian actor known for his leading roles on the stages of Shaw Festival, Stratford Festival, Soulpepper Theatre Company , and many other Canadian theatre companies.He has received three Dora Awards for the roles of Billy in The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, The Man in On the...

, Diana Leblanc
Diana Leblanc
Diana Leblanc is a Canadian television and film actress, best known known to US audiences for her portrayal of Frannie Halcyon in the TV miniseries More Tales of the City and its follow-up Further Tales of the City...

, Diego Matamoros, Nancy Palk, Albert Schultz
Albert Schultz
Albert Schultz is a Canadian actor, director and the founding artistic director of Toronto's celebrated Soulpepper Theatre Company.-Education:...

, Robyn Stevan
Robyn Stevan
Robyn Stevan is a Canadian actress. She is best known for her role in the film Bye Bye Blues, for which she won the Genie Award for Best Supporting Actress.- External links :...

, William Webster, Joseph Ziegler

In 2005, the Soulpepper Theatre Company moved into its permanent building, the Young Centre for the Performing Arts
Young Centre for the Performing Arts
- History :Gooderham and Worts was originally founded by James Worts, a British immigrant, in 1832. The company Became one of the worlds largest distilleries and in 1859 they constructed the largest distillery in Canada, also one of the largest in North America. This distillery is what remains...

. The joint project with the George Brown College
George Brown College
George Brown College is a public, fully accredited college of applied arts and technology with three full campuses in downtown Toronto, Ontario...

 theatre school was designed by local firm KPMB and is located in Toronto's historic Distillery District.

2011 Season

  • Oleanna
    Oleanna
    Oleanna is:* Oleanna, a community in Ole Bull's colony New Norway, Pennsylvania* "Oleanna" , a folk song mocking Ole Bull's ambitions of a perfect community* Oleanna , a play named after the folk song, written by David Mamet...

    , David Mamet
    David Mamet
    David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter and film director.Best known as a playwright, Mamet won a Pulitzer Prize and received a Tony nomination for Glengarry Glen Ross . He also received a Tony nomination for Speed-the-Plow . As a screenwriter, he received Oscar...

  • A Midsummer Night's Dream
    A Midsummer Night's Dream
    A Midsummer Night's Dream is a play that was written by William Shakespeare. It is believed to have been written between 1590 and 1596. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of the Duke of Athens, Theseus, and the Queen of the Amazons, Hippolyta...

    , William Shakespeare
    William Shakespeare
    William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

  • The Fantasticks
    The Fantasticks
    The Fantasticks is a 1960 musical with music by Harvey Schmidt and lyrics by Tom Jones. It was produced by Lore Noto. It tells an allegorical story, loosely based on the play "The Romancers" by Edmond Rostand, concerning two neighboring fathers who trick their children, Luisa and Matt, into...

    , Harvey Schmidt
    Harvey Schmidt
    Harvey Lester Schmidt is an American composer for musical theatre. He is best known for composing the music for the longest running musical in history, The Fantasticks, which ran off-Broadway from 1960 - 2002.-Biography:...

     and Tom Jones
    Tom Jones (writer)
    Tom Jones is a lyricist of musical theatre. His best known work is The Fantasticks, which ran off-Broadway from 1960 until 2002, and the hit song from the same, Try to Remember. Other songs from "The Fantasticks" include "Soon It's Gonna Rain", "Much More" and "I Can See It"...

  • The Time Of Your Life
    The Time of Your Life
    The Time of Your Life is a 1939 five-act play by American playwright William Saroyan. The play is the first drama to win both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award. The play opened 25 October 1939 at the Booth Theatre in New York City...

    , William Saroyan
    William Saroyan
    William Saroyan was an Armenian American dramatist and author. The setting of many of his stories and plays is the center of Armenian-American life in California in his native Fresno.-Early years:...

  • Our Town
    Our Town
    Our Town is a three-act play by American playwright Thornton Wilder. It is a character story about an average town's citizens in the early twentieth century as depicted through their everyday lives...

    , Thornton Wilder
    Thornton Wilder
    Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He received three Pulitzer Prizes, one for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and two for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a National Book Award for his novel The Eighth Day.-Early years:Wilder was born in Madison,...

  • Billy Bishop Goes to War
    Billy Bishop Goes to War
    Billy Bishop Goes to War is a Canadian musical, written by John MacLachlan Gray and Eric Peterson. One of the most famous and widely-produced plays in Canadian theatre, it dramatizes the life of Canadian World War I fighter pilot Billy Bishop....

    , John Gray and Eric Peterson
    Eric Peterson
    Eric Neal Peterson, C.M. is a Canadian stage and television actor, known for his roles in three major Canadian series – Street Legal, Corner Gas and This is Wonderland.-Personal life:...

  • Fronteras Americanas, Guillermo Verdecchia
    Guillermo Verdecchia
    Guillermo Verdecchia is a Canadian theatre artist.Verdecchia was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and came to Canada at the age of two. He was raised in Kitchener, Ontario...

  • The Aleph, Jorge Luis Borges
    Jorge Luis Borges
    Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...

     (new adaptation by Daniel Brooks
    Daniel Brooks
    Daniel Brooks is a Canadian theatre director, actor and playwright. He was born in Toronto, Ontario.A highly regarded theatre maker in Toronto's "alternative" theatre scene, Daniel Brooks has a reputation for creating and directing cutting edge productions which combine fiercely intellectual...

     and Diego Matamoros)
  • The Glass Menagerie
    The Glass Menagerie
    The Glass Menagerie is a four-character memory play by Tennessee Williams. Williams worked on various drafts of the play prior to writing a version of it as a screenplay for MGM, to whom Williams was contracted...

    , Tennessee Williams
    Tennessee Williams
    Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...

  • The Kreutzer Sonata
    The Kreutzer Sonata
    The Kreutzer Sonata is a novella by Leo Tolstoy, published in 1889 and promptly censored by the Russian authorities. The work is an argument for the ideal of sexual abstinence and an in-depth first-person description of jealous rage...

    , Leo Tolstoy
    Leo Tolstoy
    Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...

     (adaptation by Ted Dykstra, in association with Art of Time Ensemble)
  • Exit the King, Eugène Ionesco
    Eugène Ionesco
    Eugène Ionesco was a Romanian and French playwright and dramatist, and one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd...

  • White Biting Dog, Judith Thompson
    Judith Thompson
    Judith Clare Thompson, OC is a Canadian playwright who lives in Toronto, Ontario. Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail once declared that "...in this country, a playwright as good as Judith Thompson is a miracle." She has twice been awarded the Governor General's Award for drama, and is the...

  • The Price
    The Price (play)
    The Price is a 1968 play by Arthur Miller. It is a piece about family dynamics, the price of furniture and the price of one's decisions. The play opened on Broadway at the Morosco Theatre on February 7, 1968 where it played until the production moved to the 46th Street Theatre on November 18, 1968....

    , Arthur Miller
    Arthur Miller
    Arthur Asher Miller was an American playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in American theatre, writing dramas that include plays such as All My Sons , Death of a Salesman , The Crucible , and A View from the Bridge .Miller was often in the public eye,...

  • The Odd Couple
    The Odd Couple
    The Odd Couple is a 1965 Broadway play by Neil Simon, followed by a successful film and television series, as well as other derivative works and spin offs, many featuring one or more of the same actors. The plot concerns two mismatched roommates, one neat and uptight, the other more easygoing and...

    , Neil Simon
    Neil Simon
    Neil Simon is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has written numerous Broadway plays, including Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues, and The Odd Couple. He won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his play Lost In Yonkers. He has written the screenplays for several of his plays that...

  • Ghosts
    Ghosts (play)
    Ghosts is a play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It was written in 1881 and first staged in 1882.Like many of Ibsen's better-known plays, Ghosts is a scathing commentary on 19th century morality....

    , Henrik Ibsen
    Henrik Ibsen
    Henrik Ibsen was a major 19th-century Norwegian playwright, theatre director, and poet. He is often referred to as "the father of prose drama" and is one of the founders of Modernism in the theatre...

  • Parfumerie, Miklós László
    Miklós László
    Miklos Laszlo was a playwright and naturalized American citizen born in Budapest, Hungary. He is best remembered for his play Illatszertár, also known as Parfumerie, which was used as the storyline for three movies, The Shop Around the Corner, In the Good Old Summertime, and, most recently,...


Subscriptions and Gift Certificates

Soulpepper sells 2, 4, 7, and 10 ticket packages as subscriptions or as gift certificates for others. The rates are different for student subscribers, earlybird performances and regular run performances.

Youth Outreach

Soulpepper believes strongly that the connection between young people and the arts is best fostered through a direct relationship with the artists on our stages. At the centre of all of Soulpepper's education initiatives is the notion of mentorship: a direct and personal relationship between young people and our artists. For this reason, all education programs at Soulpepper are led by the artists of Soulpepper, actors/directors who are leading practitioners of their craft in Canada. Each participant of these programs will leave our home, the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, with many meaningful and ongoing relationships with the artists of Soulpepper.

School Partnerships -
Every year, Soulpepper commits to providing collaborative arts programs to a selection of schools in need of arts programming. Since 2001, Soulpepper has had the opportunity to work with a variety of schools including Queen Victoria Public School, Dundas Public School, Central Technical School, Earl Haig Secondary School and Market Lane Public School.

In Schools -
Soulpepper In The Schools Program provides a bold model for arts education partnerships between public schools and the theatre. The goals of the Soulpepper program are: to encourage students to make connections between music, literature, performing arts and their own lives; to enrich their vocabulary and extend their means of expression; to become familiar with Shakespeare's stories and language; to experience, learn, and practice drama techniques.

ESL -
Soulpepper believes that exploring classical text helps to release voice, encourages an interest in language and helps youth find power in speaking. To date Soulpepper has worked with English as a Second Language students in two Toronto high schools to develop and facilitate programs that introduce young people to classical text in a playful way.

Young Centre for the Performing Arts

In 2000 Soulpepper's Artistic Director Albert Schultz was approached by Paul Carder, then the Dean of Business and Creative Arts at George Brown College, with the suggestion that a partnership be struck between Soulpepper and the George Brown Theatre School to create a new performance/education facility.

In November 2001, the Distillery Historic District Project was announced and the partnership of George Brown College (GBC) and Soulpepper immediately began negotiations with the Cityscape Development group to take possession of Tank Houses 9 and 10 creating what would become the Young Centre for the Performing Arts.

The vision of this partnership was to create a performing arts, education and community outreach facility that would be home to Soulpepper Theatre Company with its three-tiered mandate of performance, artist training and youth outreach, George Brown Theatre School's celebrated three-year professional actor training program and Toronto's independent arts community. This facility, in which the performance and education of all performing disciplines would be undertaken, would be unique in the world.

In 2002, the architectural firm of Kuwabara Payne McKenna Blumberg Architects was hired to design the centre with Thomas Payne as the principal architect. The design created four flexible, dedicated, indoor performance venues, four studios, two classrooms, a wardrobe production facility, a student lounge, artist garden, and administration offices for GBC and Soulpepper. At the centre of the building is a welcoming atrium which includes a café/bar and fireplace. The total cost of the facility was $14 million and GBC and Soulpepper Theatre Company equally shared the cost. The shared dream became a reality in 2003, when David Young through the Michael Young Family Foundation contributed a lead gift of $3 million to what is now known as the Young Centre for the Performing Arts. The facility officially opened to the public on January 15, 2006.

Since that time more than 250,000 people have attended performances at the Young Centre, which has received numerous architectural and design awards.

The Academy

Soulpepper strives to play a significant role in the development of future generations of theatre artists through the Soulpepper Academy. This full-time, paid training program was launched in 2006. Selected through an exhaustive nation-wide search, 10 artists undertake a two year residency to further develop their skills under the guidance of leading theatre practitioners, further their careers through involvement in Soulpepper productions, teach in the classrooms of the local community, mentor youth and develop a collective creation. The Academy is composed of directors, playwrights, designers and performers and in many cases, artists are skilled in more than one area or discipline.

The Soulpepper Academy program is divided into two phases. The first year is strongly focused on training and pedagogy, while the second year shifts to performance/production with ongoing training. Mentorship and teaching activities run throughout the two-year program, as does collective creation. Artists participate in workshop showcases during the first year and in the second join the Soulpepper Company on the mainstage. A full-length, public production of an Academy Collective Creation is the culmination of the two-year residency.

After a nation-wide search, the 2009/10 Soulpepper Academy has been chosen and they are: Ins Choi, Tatjana Cornij, Raquel Duffy, Brendan Healy, Ken MacKenzie, Gregory Prest, Karen Rae, Jason Patrick Rothery, and Brendan Wall. The next round of selections will commence in 2011.

Awards

Dora Mavor Moore Awards
  • Parfumerie: Outstanding Production (2010)
  • Parfumerie; Outstanding Direction of a Play/Musical, Morris Panych (2010)
  • Parfumerie; Outstanding Original Set Design, Ken MacDonald (2010)
  • Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?; Outstanding Performance by a Male in a Principal Role, Diego Matamoros (2010)
  • A Raisin in the Sun; Outstanding Performance in a Leading Role, Alison Sealy-Smith (2009)
  • Top Girls: Outstanding Direction of a Play, Alisa Palmer (2008)
  • The Time of Your Life: Outstanding Performance in a Leading Role, Joseph Ziegler (2008)
  • The Time of Your Life: Outstanding Performance in a Featured Role, Stuart Hughes (2008)
  • Leaving Home: Outstanding Performance in a Featured Role, Jane Spidell (2007)
  • Our Town: Outstanding Production of a Play (2006)
  • No Man's Land: Outstanding Performance, William Hutt (2003)
  • The Bald Soprano/The Lesson: Outstanding Direction of a Play, Jim Warren (2001)
  • Platonov: Best Production; Outstanding Performance, Diego Matamoros (2000)
  • Platonov: Outstanding Direction of a Play, László Marton (1999)
  • Endgame: Best Production; Outstanding Sound Design, Richard Feren (1999)


Other Awards
  • 2008 - DareArts Foundation Cultural Award to Albert Schultz, in recognition of his outstanding work in empowering and educating at-risk youth
  • 2006 - Toronto Arts Council Foundation William Kilbourn Award to Albert Schultz, for contribution to the cultural life of the city
  • 2006 - City of Toronto Barbara Hamilton Memorial Award to Albert Schultz, recognizing excellence and professionalism in the performing arts
  • 2005 - City of Toronto Barbara Hamilton Memorial Award to Martha Burns
  • 2004 - Leonardo da Vinci Award for creativity & innovation in the arts, to Albert Schultz
  • 2003 - Salute to the City Award, for outstanding contribution to the cultural life of Toronto, to Albert Schultz
  • 2002 - Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal, for outstanding contributions to the community, to Albert Schultz
  • 2002 - Arts and Letters Club Award to Susan Coyne & Albert Schultz, recognizing worthy members of the artistic community
  • 2001 - Joan Chalmers National Award for Artistic Direction, to Albert Schultz
  • 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003 - Lieutenant Governor's Awards for the Arts, recognizing achievement in fundraising
  • 1999 - Mayor Mel and Marilyn's Youth Award, for mentoring emerging artists or youth

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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