Nadine Pinette and Tristan Carlucc in the Blue Room
WINNIPEG, MB – The inaugural production in the much-anticipated new Theatre 1T15 in UWinnipeg’s Canwest Centre for Theatre and Film will feature members of the third-year honours acting class and production and design students in David Hare’s perceptive, humorous and uninhibited examination of the “delicate subject.”
The Blue Room, freely adapted from Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde (originally entitled Der Reigen), traces the sexual exploits of a series of overlapping partners. While several notable films have been based on the story, Hare’s theatrical revision is set in the present utilizing Brechtian-style commentary to the action.
Although the entire cast of Schnitzler’s Der Reigen was arrested on obscenity charges in 1921 after the first public performance, in The Blue Room Hare brings us a somewhat less profane but still controversial adaptation – a cautionary note for an Aids-aware generation. In Hare’s words, the play explores, “the gulf between what we imagine, what we remember, and what we actually experience.”
Key players
Knighted in 1998, David Hare began writing in 1970 and has produced such well-known scripts as Pravda, Plenty, and Racing Demon, among many others. Also a theatrical director, he became Associate Director of the National Theatre in Britain in 1984 and has extended his written work to television and film as seen most recently in his screenplay for the highly acclaimed film, The Reader.
UWinnipeg Professor Blake Taylor, a regular performer on local stages and television, returns to the directing chair for this production by third-year students in the senior performance program. Recent UWinnipeg theatre grads Kim Donald-Haverty takes on set and costume design and Larisa Strain is the lighting designer.
Performances are Friday, February 6 through Friday, February 13 at 8:00 p.m. nightly (except Monday, February 9), with a matinée on Sunday, February 8 at 2:30 p.m. All performances take place in the new Theatre 1T15 in the Canwest Centre for Theatre and Film, 400 Colony (enter off Balmoral).
Admission is free but reservations are recommended. Please call our 24-hour Reservation and Information Line at 204.786.9152, or visit The University of Winnipeg’s Department of Theatre and Film website at: http://theatre.uwinnipeg.ca.
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For more information, please contact:
Patty Hawkins, Department of Theatre and Film, The University of Winnipeg
T: 204.786.9955, E: p.hawkins@uwinnipeg.ca
Blake Taylor, Department of Theatre and Film, The University of Winnipeg
T: 204.786.9953, E: b.taylor@uwinnipeg.ca
