SASKATOON – Persephone Theatre’s 51st season will start in September, and feature six Main Stage plays, two Youth Series plays and a bonus show.
The theatre company also announced return of other programs, including First Monday, a program for new play development with partner SUM Theatre, and the fifth annual 48-hour Queermunity Theatre Race.
“This season we are telling stories that are full of nostalgia, drama, intrigue, humour, heart swells, thrills and chills,” said Artistic Director Heather Cant. “Plays that explore different theatrical forms and genres. Plays that will reignite our love for theatre magic and that thing we do best – tell a great story.”
The Main Stage series will open with Educating Rita by Willy Russell, playing Sept. 24 to Oct. 5. This play features Rita, a feisty, brash, straight-talking hairdresser, who decides to change her life by getting a University education and is tutored by Frank, a failed poet and disillusioned professor.
Not only do they explore poetry and English literature, but they also give each other the education of a lifetime in the process.
Following the season opener is a classic story for the Halloween season – The Woman in Black by Stephen Mallatratt, adapted from the novel by Susan Hill, on the Main Stage Oct. 22 to Nov. 2. Set on the stage of an old Victorian theatre, this play delivers atmosphere, illusion and gothic horror to guarantee spine-tingling chills audiences won’t soon forget.
In the play, Arthur Kipps believes he and his family have been cursed and engages a skeptical young actor to help him tell his terrifying story and exorcise the fear that grips his soul. Audiences will question whether the lurking shadows are a trick of the eye or a haunting truth that will not be denied.
“It has been a long time since this genre has been included in Persephone’s programming, and we are eager to give audiences a hair-raising experience,” Executive Director Breanne Harmon said.
The first show in the Youth Series will be Where Have All The Buffalo Gone? by Tai Amy Grauman. In this production from Axis Theatre, two star people and a Buffalo fall to earth and continue to reconnect throughout history. This production is inspired by historical events of the Métis people of Canada, and explores the loves, the losses and the fight of Métis people of the Treaty 6 area – and their love and kinship to the buffalo, incorporating fiddle music, jigging and a life-like buffalo puppet. This show plays on the Backstage Stage Nov. 12-15, before touring to schools across the province.
