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SALESMAN IN CHINA
August 3 – October 26, 2024 | OPENS August 23
Stratford Festival

In 1983, American playwright Arthur Miller travelled to China to direct a production of his classic play, Death of a Salesman. Working with the Beijing People’s Art Theatre, Miller and his collaborators struggled to bridge the gap between languages, cultures and national identities with local audiences having been long shut off from the West. Salesman in China retells this daring act of cultural cross-pollination on stage.

BND TV
Talkshow (Bad New Days, digital)

Think Dick Cavett meets Graham Norton with a sploosh of Actor’s Studio

The format of each episode is a long-form interview with two physical theatre artists talking shop followed by a performance/interview with a musical guest. We talk a lot about physical performance, clown, play, presence, improvisation, embodied dramaturgy, the virtues of failure, and Episode 2 even features a compassionate critique of Ontario’s current education minister (pace Laura Barrett)

CHIMERICA
17 janvier – 17 février, 2024
Théâtre Jean-Duceppe, Montréal

Au deuxième jour de la répression sanglante de la place Tiananmen, juste avant que des soldats du régime chinois ne forcent la porte de sa chambre d’hôtel, le photojournaliste américain Joe Schofield capture un morceau d’histoire : le moment où un homme seul se dresse devant la colonne de chars qui traverse Beijing. Son visage n’est pas visible; son identité et son sort demeurent un mystère. Immortalisée le 5 juin 1989, cette image captivera le monde. Vingt-trois ans plus tard, Joe Schofield apprend que le tank man est toujours en vie et qu’il se trouverait en Amérique. Mettant en péril sa carrière, ses relations et son éthique, il s’engage dans une quête obsessionnelle pour retrouver ce héros inconnu.

MÉDIAS:

• Radio-Canada: Le 15-18- Culture avec Katerine Verebely (4 janv. 2024)
• Radio-Canada: Pénélope- Discussion: La pièce de théâtre Chimerica, chez Duceppe (11 janv. 2024)
• La Presse: Au-delà du cliché (13 janv. 2024)
• Le Devoir: La révolte de la place Tiananmen sur scène chez Duceppe (16 janv. 2024)

KNIVES, SEASONING, AND A DASH OF LOVE
Audiobook

In this spicy workplace romance, a hotheaded celebrity chef finds himself drawn to his inexperienced new hire. But when her bubbly attitude collides with his sharp edges, can they handle the heat, or will their love be a recipe for disaster?

Alexander Chen is one of the most talented chefs to ever grace the culinary world of French haute cuisine. He rules his kitchen with an iron fist and fiery temper, so it’s no secret that if you can’t handle the heat, he’ll gladly toss you out with the trash. As one of the first Chinese-American chefs to claw his way to the top, he has a lot to prove and a massive chip on his shoulder.

But he wasn’t always like this. Eden Monroe, his newly hired sous chef—who may or may not have (definitely) embellished a lot on her resumé to land herself the job—knew him back when he still went by his real name, Shang. He used to be sweet and helpful and definitely not the second coming of the devil himself.

Eden won’t say anything, though, no matter how hot her curiosity burns. Especially if it could cost her this job, which she needs if she has any hope of hiring a private detective to find something she lost long ago.

All she has to do is fly under the radar. It’s just a shame that she and her new boss butt heads more often than they fulfill orders. But what happens when things finally boil over, and they discover the feelings between them are spicier than they ever imagined?

BATSHIT SEVEN
Audiobook

From Governor General’s Award-nominated author Sheung-King comes a novel about a millennial living through the Hong Kong protests, as he struggles to make sense of modern life and the parts of himself that just won’t gel.

Glen Wu (aka Glue) couldn’t care less about his job. He’s returned to Hong Kong, the city he grew up in, and he’s teaching ESL, just to placate his parents. But he shows up hungover to class, barely stays awake, and prefers to spend his time smoking up until dawn breaks.

As he watches the city he loves fall—the protests, the brutal arrests—life continues around him. So he drinks more, picks more fights with his drug dealer friend, thinks loftier thoughts about the post-colonial condition and Frantz Fanon. The very little he does care about: his sister, who deals with Hong Kong’s demise by getting engaged to a rich immigration consultant; his on-and-off-again relationship with a woman who steals things from him; and memories of someone he once met in Canada….

When the government tightens its grip, language starts to lose all meaning for Glue, and he finds himself pulled into an unsettling venture, ultimately culminating in an act of violence.

Inventive and utterly irresistible, with QR codes woven throughout, Sheung-King’s ingenious novel encapsulates the anxieties and apathies of the millennial experience. Batshit Seven is an ode to a beloved city, an indictment of the cycles of imperialism, and a reminder of the beautiful things left under the hype of commodified living.

THE BOOK OF RAIN
Audiobook

The northern mining town of River Meadows is one of three hotspots in the world producing ghost ore, a new source of energy worth twenty-eight times its weight in gold. It’s also linked with slippages of time and space that gradually render the area uninhabitable. After the town is evacuated, the whole region is cordoned off, the new no-go zone wryly nicknamed “the Park.”

Three intertwined stories flow from the disaster of River Meadows. Alex Hewitt and his sister, Amery, were among the first to be shipped out of the contaminated town. Now an accomplished game designer, Alex has moved on, but his sister has not, making increasingly dangerous break-ins to save animals trapped in the toxic wasteland. When at last she fails to return from a trip inside the fence, Alex flies to River Meadows to search for her, enlisting her friend, Michio Amano, a mathematician who needs to transcend the known laws of physics if he and Alex are to succeed.

CHINATOWN
September 13-17, 2022
City Opera Vancouver

Chinatown is a story of family and neighbourhood, racism and resistance, history and tomorrow. In two acts and two hours it examines six characters, two families, and a chorus of male ghosts, from the building of the CPR through to our own times. It deals with violence and despair, the Head Tax, the Exclusion Act, paper sons, and paper promise.

It is a Western opera, but incorporates Chinese themes, sounds and sensibilities. And it is a love story.

The inspiration for CHINATOWN lies in our history, a great neighbourhood and its people, and its resistance against racism – both historical, and resurgent today.

A recording with the premiere cast was released September 8, 2023 by Leaf Music.

“A striking new opera”- David Olds, Wholenote Magazine

Featured in CBC’s Summer 2023 album guide.

THE STANDARD SING
Audio Play

From the corner of Spadina and Dundas in the heart of Toronto’s Chinatown, two friends, Helen and Justin, find themselves led to an old and abandoned theatre after receiving a cryptic note. Known as The Standard in the early 1920s, during the height of Canada’s Chinese Immigration Act, this venue had a history of renting its space to Cantonese Opera performers. Once inside, Helen and Justin run into the theatre’s mysterious and charismatic caretaker, Mr. Sing, who muses enthusiastically about the theatre’s history of Cantonese Opera performance.