BunnyFeb. 21 - Apr. 1, 2018

CREATIVE TEAM

Nick AndisonLighting DesignerBased on the original lighting design by Kimberly Purtell

Katherine Belyea Apprentice Stage Manager

Michael GianfrancescoSet & Costume Designer

Alexander MacSween Composer & Sound Designer

Sandy Plunkett Stage Manager

Siobhan Richardson Intimacy Coach

Sarah Garton StanleyDirector

Christine Urquhart Associate Designer

James Wallis Assistant Director

TARRAGON 2017/18 SEASON SPONSOR TARRAGON MAINSPACE SPONSOR

Bunny

CAST

Gabriella Albino Lola

Maev Beaty Sorrel

Rachel CairnsMaggie

Matthew Edison Carol

Cyrus Lane The Professor

Jesse LaVercombe Angel

Tony Ofori Justin

Written by Hannah Moscovitch

GOVERNMENT SUPPORT

PRODUCTION SPONSOR

The Stavro FamilyFoundation

Originally commissioned and the World Première of Bunnyproduced by the Stratford Festival

Antoni Cimolino, Artistic Director & Anita Gaffney, Executive DirectorOpening night: August 18th, 2016

Playwright’s NoteWritten by Hannah Moscovitch

When I was a kid, I read books by flashlight. And not just at night, past my bedtime - I did it in the daytime too. On weekends, my favourite thing was to shut myself in the linen closet with a crappy flashlight and read in there until I killed the battery. I’m not sure now why I did that. The romance of low lighting? The blotting out of everything else?

My mother’s a Jane Austen fan, a paying member of the Jane Austen Society of North America (or JASNA for short), who goes to Jane Austen conferences once a year in Portland or Chicago or whatever weird city is hosting it in any given year. In junior high, I adored David Bowie, but I adored Jane Austen even more. By high school, I was reading all the

Victorian novelists. By first-year university, I was a super fan. When a student in one of my survey classes called Jane Austen “boring”, I was genuinely angry with him. That was my relationship to Victorian novels. I loved them the way teenagers love: fanatically, mercilessly. I loved them the way Joan of Arc loved God.

So naturally, I became a playwright (ha, ha).

Maybe I’ve fetishized the novel for too long to write one. Or maybe reading in closets by flashlight signalled I was destined for a different medium: the darkened space. I’m grown up now, and I idolize a new set of writers, many of them playwrights, TV showrunners, the creators of autofiction and live art/performance...

Bunny is an attempt to reckon with the novels I worshipped so blindly as a teenager, to scrutinize them, hold them to account. In order to write this play, I’ve drawn on the Modernists, on those subversive novelists who consciously queried form. This James Joyce quote was stuck to my laptop as I wrote: “I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use - silence, exile, and cunning.”

- Hannah Moscovitch

All my thanks to The Stratford Festival for the commission of Bunny, and in particular to Antoni Cimolino and David Auster. Many thanks to Bob White for his brilliant dramaturgy of the project. Thanks to the oh-so-talented performers who premiered Bunny: Maev Beaty, Tim Campbell, David Patrick Flemming, Jessica Hill, Cyrus Lane, Krystin Pellerin and Emilio Vieira. And of course thanks to the formidable Sarah Stanley for collaborating so closely with me on Bunny and helping me shape the piece, and for creating such a dreamy premiere production. A thank you to Death Doula Barb Phillips for her support and guidance. Thanks to Maev Beaty for being a modern-day muse, a friend, and a dramaturgically savvy rockstar of a performer. And finally thanks to Tarragon Theatre for being my home.

GABRIELLA ALBINO Lola At Tarragon: Debut. Other theatre credits include: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Festival Players), The Penelopiad, As You Like It, Cavalcade (GBTS), In the Heights, Beauty and the Beast, American Idiot, Jesus Christ Superstar (Yes Theatre), Emotional Creature (Nightwood/V-Day). She has worked as an actor developing new Canadian

work with Studio 180, Soulpepper, fu-GEN, Factory Theatre, and Festival Players. Gabriella is currently a member of the Factory Mechanicals, Factory Theatre’s company of emerging actors. She is a recent graduate of the George Brown Theatre School. Upcoming: Mary in Merrily We Roll Along, directed by Mitchell Cushman (Yes Theatre).

NICK ANDISON Lighting Designer At Tarragon: as lighting designer: Bunny, Mustard, Midsummer (A Play with Songs); as assistant lighting designer: The Realistic Joneses, Wormwood, The Valley, No Great Mischief. Elsewhere: Theatre Smash (as lighting designer: Das Ding), Shaw Festival 2017 (as assistant lighting designer: The Madness of George III, Dancing at

Lughnasa, A Christmas Carol), Mirvish (as assistant lighting designer: Butcher), Soulpepper (as assistant lighting designer: True West, Farther West), Thousand Islands Playhouse (as lighting designer: Das Ding, as assistant lighting designer: No Great Mischief ), Fujiwara Dance Inventions (as Technical & Lighting Director: EUNOIA). Other: Graduate of Ryerson Theatre School, BFA Honors 2013.

MAEV BEATY Sorrel Maev was last seen at Tarragon in Wide Awake Hearts. In her 18-year professional career she has gathered 50 stage credits from across the country, ranging from new plays (Maev has appeared in 25 Canadian Premieres, including Palace of the End, Proud, Terminus, Passion Play, Parfumerie, Montparnasse and Goblin Market) to

the classics (Goneril, Viola, Titania, Rosaline, Hamlet, Helena and Portia, among others). She originated Bunny in her third of four recent seasons at the Stratford Festival. She is a Toronto Theatre Critics’ Award winner, three-time Dora winner and nine-time nominee in both performance and writing. She’s been a proud member of huge theatre ensemble endeavours such as Theatrefront’s The Mill series, Volcano Theatre’s Another Africa (LuminaTO/Canadian Stage) and Nightwood’s The Penelopiad. Next fall she’ll be playing “Hannah Moscovitch” in their play (also created with Ann-Marie Kerr) Secret Life of a Mother at the Theatre Centre.

KATHERINE BELYEA Apprentice Stage Manager For Tarragon: Undercover. Other work includes Candide (Talk Is Free); Arash (Modern Times); Louis Riel (National Arts Centre); No Strings (Attached), X (Sunny Drake); Faust, As You Like It (Theatre By The Bay); Faust, The Brothers Grimm, The Bremen Town Musicians (Highlands Opera Studio); The Terrible Parents

(Cabaret Company); The Magic Flute, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Il trovatore

Artist Biographies

(Opera York); rock.paper.sistahz (b current); The Rape of Lucretia, Béatrice et Bénédict (MYOpera); Contempt, Nature of the Beast (Safeword); The Castle (Red One); Nightmare Dream (IFT/Obsidian); tick, tick ... BOOM! (Angelwalk). Thanks to Sandy, the company and everyone at Tarragon.

RACHEL CAIRNS Maggie Rachel trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Theatre credits include The Summoned, Hamlet (Tarragon), Stupid F*cking Bird (Bird Collective), Seeds, Fury (Blythe Festival), Twelfth Night, Hamlet, Cymbeline, Equivocation (Bard on the Beach), Peter and the Starcatcher (Arts Club), Romeo and Juliet (Pilot Theatre, UK). TV credits include:

Anne (Netf lix), Save Me (CBC), Saving Hope (CTV). She is the creator of three award winning web series, check them out at www.rachelcairns.ca. Up next Rachel will be appearing as Juliet in R&J and Helena in Dream in High Park this summer.

MATTHEW EDISON Carol At Tarragon: Bunny, Marine Life, An Enemy of the People, Sextet, The Real World?, Forests, Midnight Sun. As playwright: The Domino Heart. Other theatre: Killer Joe, Noises Off, Venus in Fur, Race, Amadeus, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, Proof, A Christmas Carol, Loot, Awake and Sing!, The Caretaker, The Real Thing, The School for Wives, The Importance

of Being Ernest, The 39 Steps, Lawrence and Holloman, Pride and Prejudice, The Man Who Came to Dinner, The Real Thing. Film and TV: The Detail, Save me, The Girlfriend Experience, Dirty Singles, Rookie Blue, Reign, Saving Hope, The LA Complex, Republic of Doyle, Harriet the Spy, Princess, Flash of Genius, The Wild Girl, Murdoch Mysteries, House Party, Are You Afraid of the Dark?. Other: Matthew received two Dora nominations for his play The Domino Heart and for his performance as Hal in Proof, as well as a My Entertainment World award for Killer Joe.

MICHAEL GIANFRANCESCO Set & Costume Designer For Tarragon Theatre: Little One, Other People’s Children. Michael has designed for theatres across Canada including The Stratford Festival, Shaw Festival, Canadian Opera Company, National Ballet of Canada, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Opera Atelier, Tarragon Theatre, Buddies in Bad Times,

Canadian Stage Company, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, The Grand Theatre, Citadel Theatre, Theatre Calgary, Segal Centre, Centaur Theatre Company, Acting Up Stage, Studio 180, Against the Grain, Young People’s Theatre, Neptune Theatre, Queen of Puddings Music Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, Ross Petty Productions, Canadian Rep Theatre. Michael’s set design for Cabaret at the Shaw Festival was featured at the Prague Quadrennial for Performance Design and Space in 2015. He is a recipient of the Virginia and Myrtle Cooper Award in Costume Design from the Ontario Arts Foundation.

CYRUS LANE The Professor Cyrus is proud to be working at the Tarragon for the first time in Bunny. This winter, he played Scrooge in Ross Petty’s A Christmas Carol: The Family Musical with a Scrooge Loose at the Elgin Theatre. Selected shows from his 6 seasons at the Stratford Festival include The Changeling, Macbeth, As You Like It, Bunny (original production), The

Taming of the Shrew, Possible Worlds, Cymbeline, Peter Pan, Titus

Andronicus, Richard III and Wanderlust. Happy moving between musicals and dramas, some favourite credits are Twelve Angry Men (Soulpepper - Dora Award, Ensemble), Kiss of the Spider Woman (Talk is Free), Passion Play (Convergence/Outside the March/Sheep No Wool - Dora Award, Ensemble), You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown (YPT), The Tin Drum (UnSpun Theatre) and An Inconvenient Musical (Factory). After two seasons at the Shaw Festival, Cyrus acted in several shows for Canadian Stage including Rock N Roll, Habeas Corpus, and Take Me Out. TV credits include Reign, The Border, The Summit, Anne of Green Gables: a New Beginning, and on the Murdoch Mysteries playing Roger Newsome, and now that Roger is dead, his identical twin brother, Rupert. He trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He sends his love to his wife, writer-comedian Joanne O’Sullivan. They have an 8-year-old daughter named Eliza.

JESSE LAVERCOMBE Angel For Tarragon: Bunny, Hamlet, Sequence. Other theatre credits include: The Bakkhai (Marigny Opera House, New Orleans), Our Beautiful Sons (Blyth), S h e e t s (Videofag), The Ark: Ibsen on Fogo Island (National Arts Centre), A Presence of Monster (PuSh Festival), Mistatim (Red Sky, Canadian Tour), Hacked (Caravan Stage Company,

U.S. Tour). TV: American Gods, The Detail, Salvation, Mayday, Save Me; Films include: Mary Goes Round, The Telephone Game, In Clamatore, Slap Happy. Writing Credits – plays include: Love Me Forever Billy H. Tender, Preacher Man, Donny’s Second Book; his most recent short film, “The Things You Think I’m Thinking,” has been selected for festivals including South by Southwest, Slamdance, Whistler [Winner: Best Female-Directed Short Award], Oaxaca, British Film Institute, Canadian Film Fest; Writer and Contributing Editor for Intermission Magazine; 2017 Writer-in-Residence for Driftwood; commission for a new musical from YES Theatre. Training: National Theatre School, Canadian Film Centre Actors’ Conservatory. www.jesselavercombe.com

ALEXANDER MACSWEEN Composer & Sound Designer Musician, composer and sound designer, Alexander MacSween, has navigated many musical genres and participated in numerous dance, theatre and film projects. As a composer and sound designer he has worked with Natasha Bakht, Marie Brassard, Daniel Brooks, Paul-André Fortier,

Dana Gingras, Brigitte Haentjens, François Girard, Jennifer Lacey, Robert Lepage, Montréal-Danse, José Navas, Necessary Angel Theatre Company, Public Recordings and The Stratford Festival. He is active as a drummer and multi-instrumentalist in the fields of rock, electronic and improvised music, having played with Bionic, Foodsoon and The Nils, and in the duo Detention with Sam Shalabi, as well as in Martin Tétreault’s Turntable Quartet. Alexander has created numerous solo musical performances and sound installations. He is also a teacher, giving workshops in live sound processing for the performing arts in diverse institutions around the world. His latest record, The Squiggle Game, is available on &records.

HANNAH MOSCOVITCH Playwright Tarragon past productions: East of Berlin, The Children’s Republic, This is War, Little One/Other People’s Children, Infinity. Hannah Moscovitch’s work has been produced across Canada as well as in the United States, Britain, Ireland, Greece, Japan, Germany,

Austria and Australia. Hannah has been the recipient of numerous awards for her work, including the Trillium Book Award, the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play, the SummerWorks Prize for Production, a Toronto Critic’s Award, both The Scotsman Fringe First and The Herald Angel Award at the Edinburgh Festival, and the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize administered by Yale University. She is one of Tarragon Theatre’s Playwrights-In-Residence. Upcoming Projects: Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story created with Christian Barry and Ben Caplan (Off-Broadway New York 59E59 Theatres), What a Young Wife Ought to Know (2b theatre/Crow’s Theatre).

TONY OFORI Justin Born and raised in Toronto, Tony Ofori is a graduate of both Humber’s Theatre Performance program and York University’s BFA program, later training with Second City to round off his theatrical studies. Some of his latest works include, Best of Fringe Kids winner Tick, Harold Green’s production of The Model Apartment (Toronto Centre

for the Performing Arts), Shakespeare in Action a touring show, and Let’s Go (Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace). Aside from theatre, Tony is also a recording hip hop musician, opening for the likes of A$AP Rocky, Massari and Scratch from The Roots. Tony is absolutely honoured to be working with Tarragon and is excited to work with such an amazing team to tell this amazing story.

SANDY PLUNKETT Stage Manager A champion of site specific theatre, Sandy often finds himself surrendering to various locales. Sandy is the great-grandson of Morley Plunkett of the almost forgotten WW1 Canadian Vaudeville Troupe, The Dumbells. Tarragon Credits: The Trouble with Mr. Adams, The Circle. Selected Credits: The Fish Eyes Trilogy

and Boys with Cars, (Nightswimming), The Berlin Blues and Ipperwash (Blyth Festival), Flood Thereafter, This (Canadian Stage), Julius Caesar, The Comedy of Errors, As You Like It, Titus Andronicus, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Winter’s Tale, Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare in High Park), Public Servant, Tails from the City, The Dog and the Angel, Weather The Weather (Theatre Columbus/Common Boots), La Communion, Madre (Aluna), The Test, Through the Leaves, Festen (Company Theatre), Gladstone Variations, Yichud (seclusion) (Convergence), The Silicone Diaries, Beauty Salon, (Buddies in Bad Times), The Turn of the Screw (DVxT).

SIOBHAN RICHARDSON Intimacy Coach Siobhan Richardson is an Intimacy Director, co-founder of Intimacy Directors International (www.IntimacyDirectorsInternational.com) and of Canadian Intimacy for Stage and Screen (www.ciss.online) and is currenly the only person in Canada recognized as an Intimacy Director by Tonia Sina, founder of the Intimacy For

The Stage method. Siobhan is quickly building an impressive resume in this field, including several directing and teaching credits across Canada, the USA and Europe. Credits include: Serenity Wild (Tender Container), Really, Really (Sheridan UTM), Titus Andronicus (Hart House), Odd One Out (Human Wick Effect), Dancock’s Dance (The Hogtown Collective), Aunt Dan and Lemon (Shadowtime Productions), The Container (Theatre Fix), Hogtown (The Hogtown Collective), White Biting Dog (Soulpepper), The Trial of Judith K (Thought For Food Productions), and assistant to Intimacy

Choreographer Tonia Sina on The Bakkhai (Stratford Festival, directed by Jillian Keiley). Siobhan is also an actor/fighter/singer/dancer, and a fight instructor/director. www.siobhanrichardson.com/intimacy

SARAH GARTON STANLEY Director For Tarragon: Director of Spring Training for 3 years and performer and creator for several Spring Festivals. Other Theatre: Awkward and Embarrassing Conversations About Difference (Neworld), Kill Me Now (RMTC/NAC), Bunny (Stratford), December Man (L’homme de décembre) (NAC), Caught (Theatre Passe

Muraille), Helen Lawrence (Arts Club, Canadian Stage, BAM, Kammerspiele etc.), We Keep Coming Back (Polish tour + Asheknaz, Winnipeg Jewish Theatre, Chutzpah), Associate Artistic Director of English Theatre at the National Arts Centre, Co-creator and Creative Catalyst SpiderWebShow Performance. Sarah is presently a PhD student in Cultural Studies at Queen’s. Upcoming: Liza Balkan’s Out the Window (Luminato/Theatre Centre) and foldA (SpiderWebShow).

CHRISTINE URQUHART Associate Designer Christine Urquhart is a Set and Costume Designer who has worked in the UK, Europe, New Zealand and Australia. International favourites include: ‘Medea’ (Zen Zen Zo), ‘The Wholehearted’ and ‘The Island’ (Massive Company/National Theatre Scotland), ‘Die Fledermaus’ (Welsh National Opera),

‘Potatostamp Megalomaniac’ (Pressure Point Theatre) and ‘Call of the Sparrows’ (Proudly Asian Theatre). In Toronto: ‘Stupid F*cking Bird’ (Bird Collective), ‘Dancocks Dance’ and ‘Hogtown’ (Hogtown Collective), ‘The Good Doctor Holmes’ (TPM), ‘What Linda Said’, ‘The Nails’, ‘Reality Theatre’, ‘Rootless’, and ‘Divine’ (Summerworks), ‘Grimly Handsome’ (Theatre Animal) and ‘Good Morning Viet-Mom’ (Soaring Skies Collective). She has designed in film including features; ‘Language’, an experimental, multi lingual re-imagining of ‘King Lear’ and horror film ‘Lifechanger’. This year she is thrilled to be a Design Assistant at Shaw Festival.

JAMES WALLIS Assistant Director James is the Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of Shakespeare BASH’d. For Shakespeare BASH’d: (director) A Midsummer Night’s Dream - a staged reading (2011), Romeo and Juliet (2012), Love’s Labour’s Lost (2014), Macbeth (2014), The Merry Wives of Windsor (2015 Co-Director), Edward II - a staged reading

(2015), King John (2015), The Changeling - a staged reading (2016), Twelfth Night (2017), Volpone – a staged reading (2017). James’ other credits as a director include: reasons to be pretty (Labute Cycle), As You Like It (Theatre by the Bay), Shakespeare in Hospitals (Spur of the Moment), Titus Andronicus (Hart House Theatre). James just finished his second season at the Stratford Festival in 2016 as part of Michael Langham Workshop for Classical Direction. He was the assistant director on Macbeth, the world premiere of Bunny, and Romeo and Juliet. He is returning in 2018 for his third season as assistant director of Julius Caesar.

Tarragon Theatre has been Canada’s home for groundbreaking contemporary plays since 1970.

For 48 years, Tarragon Theatre has created, developed and produced new plays by home-grown artists as well as significant works from the world stage, vitally contributing to the important legacy of a Canadian culture. Tarragon assists over 30 emerging and established playwrights each year through residencies, grants, dramaturgical support, and training programs. Patrons of all ages attend lectures, workshops, talkback weeks, play readings, and other events designed to engage audiences with new work. Since its founding, over 190 works have premiered at Tarragon and over 500 scripts have been created and workshopped, receiving 34 nominations and 11 wins for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Richard Rose has been the Artistic Director since 2002.

Tarragon Theatre

TARRAGON THEATRE STAFF

RICHARD ROSEARTISTIC DIRECTOR

Esther JunAssistant Artistic Director

Joanna FalckLiterary Manager

John ThomsonTechnical Director

Carla RitchieProduction Manager

Kathleen JohnstonHead of Wardrobe

Care RobertsonHead of Props

Jessica MacDuffHead Scenic Artist/Assistant Props

Ryan OliverHead Carpenter

Jennifer LawsMainspace Technician

Lindsay JenkinsExtraspace Technician

ANDREA VAGIANOSMANAGING DIRECTOR

Helen MonroeBusiness Manager

Peter HarteDirector of Marketing & Communications

Danielle MorganPublicist

Courtney FiddisDirector of Development

Anne WesselsDirector of Education

Natasha ParsonsDirector of Patron Services

Cam JohnstonManager of Patron Services

Matthew PilipiakAssistant Manager of Patron Services

Octavian TurcanFacilities Manager

Danielle BourgonEducation Coordinator

The Stratford Festival has been setting the standard for classical theatre in North America for 65 years. It presents a seven-month season of a dozen or more plays in four venues, along with a Forum of events to enrich the play-going experience. With the works of Shakespeare at its core, this acclaimed repertory theatre produces classics, contemporary dramas, musical theatre and new plays. It presented its first season in 1953, using an innovative thrust stage that revolutionized Shakespearean performance in our time and inspired the design of several major venues worldwide. Since then, it has welcomed more than 27 million theatregoers from around the world, people who flock to this small Canadian town for one reason: an unparalleled quality of performance.

Stratford Festival

STRATFORD FESTIVAL STAFF

ANTONI CIMOLINOARTISTIC DIRECTOR

David AusterProducer

Simon MarsdenDirector of Production

Bob WhiteDirector of New Plays

Rachel Smith-SpencerDirector of Advancement

Shelley StevensonAdministrative Director

Darryl HurasDirector of Finance

Gursharan FloraDirector of Marketing

Ann SwerdfagerPublicity Director

Jason MillerCreative Planning Director

Beth RussellCasting Director

Bonnie GreenAssociate Producer

Paul ShawCompany Manager

Susan LemenchickAssistant to the Producer

Carla FowlerProduction Administrator

ANITA GAFFNEYEXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

The original props, costumes and wigs for this production were fabricated by the artisans of the Stratford Festival, including:

Robbin CheesmanTechnical Director, Studio Theatre

Eleanor CreelmanAssociate Technical Director

Andrew MesternTechnical Director, Scenic Construction

Mary-Jo Carter DoddDesign Coordinator

Dona HrablukHead of Properties

Duncan JohnstoneHead Scenic Artist

Ryan FlanaganHead Carpenter

Elizabeth CopemanHead of Wardrobe, Studio Theatre

Gerald AltenburgHead of Wigs and Makeup

PARADISE LOST BY ERIN SHIELDS. DIRECTED BY JACKIE MAXWELL. WITH: LUCY PEACOCK, QASIM KHAN, AMELIA SARGISSON

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Tarragon Theatre is an active member of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (PACT), the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts (TAPA), Creative Trust Working Capital for the Arts, and Theatre Ontario, and engages professional artists who are members of Canadian Actors’ Equity Association under the terms of the Canadian Theatre Agreement.

On stage this April

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