Thursday SHOWCASE (Youth)
SHAW Festival Studio Theatre 
Niagara-on-the-Lake

Conference presenter Helen Zdriluk has assembled an evening of performances showcasing recent lyric theatre creations by and for Canadian youth. Projects range from a student-written/composed musical, to a show recently performed in the Toronto Fringe, to Marathon of Hope, written by a Sheridan College student and now being considered for professional production. Scenes will be presented from the ever popular Concrete Daisy, written by students at Burlington Central High School (ON) and published in the first Theatre Ontario anthology of plays celebrated in the Sears Drama Festival. Concrete Daisy was performed at the Hamilton Place studio theatre, produced for video, and has been subsequently performed by many schools across the country. It will be presented by MM Robinson High School, Burlington. Big Box Story, a satire inspired by creator Britta Johnson's hometown's real-life battle against big-box retailers, is a tale of
corruption, greed, integrity and hope set in a fictitious discount retailer outlet called HoggsMart. At the age of 16, Britta began creating Big Box Story as a writing co-op at Stratford Central Secondary School. She wrote the book and lyrics, composed the songs, directed the 38-cast member production, and accompanied the show live on piano. Community support launched Big Box Story into an extended run and a one-night-only performance on the Avon Stage of the Stratford Festival. Britta returns to direct several of the original cast in this excerpt from Big Box Story.

David Warrack
(book, lyrics, and music)
and Elizabeth Beeler

Arguably Warrack's favourite piece of writing, Dancing in the Coal Dust celebrates the life of Ginger Goodwin, a coal miner, labour activist and bon vivant whose mysterious death at the hands of government agents on Vancouver Island in 1918 has never been fully explained. A hero to the common man, his name and reputation continue to resonate 90 years after his death. The show was commissioned by Showcase Theatre on Vancouver Island (Artistic Director Jeff Hyslop) but awaits its world premiere. Lyric Canada 2010 is proud to present this showcase performance of a remarkable moment in Canadian lyric theatre by Canada’s most prolific lyric theatre artist. With Corey O'Brien, Allie Hughes, Barry Wood, Kelly Holiff, Greg Finney, Daniel Lucifora, Patrick Whalen, Robin Stalder, Jonathon Dick, Ryan Whittal, Lona Davis, Donnie Macphee, Eden Richmond, and Kevin Clark, Kellan Ziffle.

Henry's Wife

Randall Eng (composer) and Alexis Bernier (librettist) will present scenes from their new opera Henry’s Wife with performers James Sasser (Henry) and Amy Justman (Marisa).

Henry's Wife is a love story, a mystery, a family drama, a ghost story. It is a piece about being stuck in the past, about embracing the future, about creative inspiration, a piece where a stranger arrives and disrupts the status quo. At the work's center is the question of the natural order of the world—whether it exists, whether it is desirable, what our place is in it, how much we can affect the progress of our lives.

Henry's Wife received developmental support from Tapestry New Opera and American Opera Projects. The Center for Contemporary Opera presented the first complete piano-vocal reading of the work in New York in March 2009.

Ian McAndrew (composer) and Gordon Portman (librettist and professor at the Brandon University School of Music), both Artists-in-Residence at Amphion Opera (Toronto), will present scenes from their new Canadian opera Cassandra. Based upon sources including Homer's The Iliad, Virgil's Aenied, and Sophocles' Agamemnon, Cassandra is a chamber opera in five scenes with a score based on six 12-tone rows. First performed in Hamilton and Toronto in 2003, the original concert cast recording of Cassandra was released in May 2010.

The Boys Are Coming Home, first premiered in Chicago, 2006 and now titled One Step Forward, is based upon William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. Set in New England 1945 this show explores the ramifications of World War II in America, the ‘just war’ that was a catalyst for overwhelming social, sexual, racial, and political change. From a musically rich period of patriotic and sentimental songs of wartime, the exciting rhythms of swing in the sounds of big bands and the emerging style of bebop ignite this new American opera by Canadian artist Leslie Arden. Arden is a multi-award winning book writer and lyricist whose work House of Martin Guerre had an acclaimed run at the Goodman Theatre (Chicago)in the late 1990s.

Fresh from a stunning premiere at the Toronto SummerWorks 2010 is a brand-new song cycle that explores the symbiosis between the process of becoming an adult, and the cultural landscape in which this process occurs. Through song, four people try to cultivate the appropriate social graces for the world today, while constantly interacting with the popular music traditions that shape, and are shaped by, these conventions. Examining the intersections between real-life Big Feelings and their manifestations in pop culture, the music of Biggish Kids depicts these relationships with clarity, surprise and honesty.

Performing for us will be the remarkable cast from the SummerWorks premiere:
Sara Farb, Allie Hughes, Alex Samaras, and Felicity Williams.

Cathy Elliott (book composer/lyricist) will be presenting songs from
Gothic. Information to follow.

Hansel and Gretel is an imaginative new creation set in a concentration camp found in a dark, German forest in 1940. Using animated graphic design, music, text and theatrical dialogue, this is a work-in-process that travels between the unique, yet connected, worlds of music theatre, opera, and choral work. Currently writing and teaching in Toronto, Rosen has written 17 plays produced throughout United States and Canada. Hansel and Gretel is the fruit of a Creative SSHRC Grant awarded in 2008-10. The piece derives from collaborator Jonathan Aitken’s earlier explorations into electronic poetry. Rosen will be accompanied by composer Darren Russo (Montreal), David Coomber, Anthony Malarky, Jesse Nerenberg, Christina Opolko, and Niagara-on-the-Lake cellist Helen Copek.

Tapestry’s Creative Process:  Marjorie Chan, Writer in Residence as hostess; A writer/composer team from the most recent LIBLAB; 2 Opera Briefs

Paul Sportelli, composer and Music Director of the Shaw Festival and Jay Turvey, librettist and Shaw Ensemble member, will present scenes from a new musical based on the life of Maria Severa Onofriana. Maria Severa transports us to nineteenth-century Portugal and tells the story of the country’s first fado singer who achieved near-mythical status after her death.

Synopsis: Maria, born in the slums of Lisbon, sings in her mother’s tavern. She has a love affair with Count Armando di Vimioso, an aristocratic bullfighter, who helps her in her meteoric rise to fame.

Julie Martell will sing the part of Maria, and Mark Uhre will sing the role of Armando, accompanied by Paul Sportelli at the piano. This new creation was work-shopped in the fall of 2008 with Shaw Festival Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell as director and dramaturge.