Madd Harold directs Theatre @ York’s season opener
TORONTO, November 8, 2007 -- Theatre @ York launches its season with Rhinoceros, Eugene Ionesco's compelling exploration of the seductive and destructive power of the drive to conformity. The show previews opens Nov. 6 and runs to Nov. 10 in the Sandra Faire and Ivan Fecan Theatre at York University.
Written in 1958 in the aftermath of the rise and fall of Nazism, Rhinoceros dramatizes the degeneration of a whole community into a herd of stampeding animals – and the lonely and bewildered resistance of a single individual.
A masterwork of the Theatre of the Absurd, the play investigates the role of personal autonomy and responsibility within a climate of moral abdication and social disintegration.
Ground-breaking Canadian director, performer and playwright Madd Harold directs Theatre @ York’s production of Rhinoceros. As a co-founder and artistic director of Montreal’s acclaimed indie theatre company, Gravy Bath Productions, Harold earned national recognition and two Best Director MECCAs (Montreal English Critics Circle Awards). His award-winning stage productions with the company include The Tempest; The Picture of Dorian Gray; Coriolanus; the five-hour epic, Kali Yuga; and Henry. Octobre. 1970.
A classically trained actor, Madd has played many roles in New York, London, Edinburgh, Montreal and Toronto. Selected credits include the film The Day After Tomorrow and television productions Terry (CTV), Tripping the Wire (CTV), 15/Love (YTV) and Audrey Hepburn (ABC). His book, The Actors’ Guide to Performing Shakespeare, is sold internationally.
Harold comes to Theatre @ York fresh from a year at the Stratford Festival, where he assistant directed The Merchant of Venice and Pentecost.
At York, Harold is working with a cast of fourth-year actors in the Department of Theatre. Together, the director and performers uncovered the contemporary resonance of the themes of conformity and transformation underpinning Rhinoceros.
“We looked at conformity in our own lives, our impulse to ‘fit in’, the small ways in which we drive others to conform, and our incessant need to seek approval from others and to find identity in others’ opinions,” said Harold.
“We asked ourselves: what might ‘rhinoceroses’ mean to us today? What is our mass-mind, what are our prevailing social standards, what is our expression of ‘group-think’?”
Theatre @ York’s production of Rhinoceros is designed and constructed entirely by undergraduate students in York’s theatre program.
York University’s theatre department and Theatre @ York productions have helped shape a generation of outstanding Canadian theatre artists. Alumni include screen and stage actors Rachel McAdams (Married Life, The Family Stone, Wedding Crashers, The Notebook), Tamara Bernier (Mamma Mia! – Toronto & Broadway), Maurice Dean Wint (Robocop, X-Men, Capture Me), and Stratford and Shaw Festival veterans Tara Rosling, Thom Marriott, Jennifer Gould, Patrick Galligan and Deborah Hay; artistic directors Richard Rose (Tarragon Theatre, Necessary Angel) and Soheil Parsa (Modern Times Stage Company); stage directors Jillian Keiley (Tempting Providence), D.D. Kugler and Weyni Mengesha (‘da Kink in my Hair); lighting designers Arun Srinivasan (Lion King – Toronto) and Renée Brode (Blyth, Stratford Festivals), costume and set designer Charlotte Dean, and COC Ring cycle designers Deeter Schurig and Wendy Greenwood; and playwrights Diane Flacks (Care, Sibs) and Djanet Sears (Harlem Duet, The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God).
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Theatre @ York presents Rhinoceros directed by Madd Harold
When: Previews Nov. 4 & 5; Opening Nov. 6; Runs to Nov. 10
Performances nightly at 7pm, plus matinees Nov. 7 & 9 at 1pm.
Where: Sandra Faire and Ivan Fecan Theatre, Accolade East Building, York University, 4700 Keele St.
Admission: $15 / students & seniors $10. Previews: Nov. 4 PWYC / Nov. 5 $5
Box Office: 416.736.5888 | www.yorku.ca/perform/boxoffice
www.yorku.ca/finearts/Theatre@York
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Media contact:
Brigitte Kleer, Communications & PR, Faculty of Fine Arts, York University
Tel. 416.7316.2100 ext. 77143 | bkleer@yorku.ca
