FORNES x 2

SPECIAL ADDED SHOW SUNDAY 2PM * * DUE TO POPULAR DEMAND

Theatre Asylum presents

FORNES x 2 ~ THE SUCCESSFUL LIFE OF 3 + MUD

Featuring Hardee T. Lineham, Michelle Latimer, Jamie Robinson

https://nowtoronto.com/stage/theatre/review-fornes-x-2/http://www.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=625272&playlistId=1.2400169&binId=1.811512&playlistPageNum=1&binPageNum=1

Directed by Jennifer H. Capraru Scenography/Projection Design Troy Hourie, Costume Design Snezana Pesic, Lighting Design Sandra Marcroft, Music Cathy Nosaty, PSM/Associate Producer Chad Dembski, SM's Maria Colasante, Cole Vincent, Assitant Director Molly McGregor, Dramaturgy Judith Rudakoff, Lucy Powis

Kensington Market 213 Augusta Avenue down the alley under Fresco's in a multi-roomed, underground space. May 30 - Sunday, June 14 (previews May 28 29). A new adaptation linking two one-act plays by multi Obie-Award winning and Pulitzer Prize-nominated Cuban-American playwright Maria Irene Fornés.

Capraru and scenographer Hourie have conceived the work as an immersive, site-specific installation piece set in and reflecting Kensington. A leading figure of the Off-Off-Broadway movement, Maria Irene Fornés’ plays are raw, alive and examine the human condition using deceptively simple language. The Successful Life of 3 (1965) and Mud (1983), written almost 20 years apart, once linked, expose a cycle of consumerism and poverty which relates to the changing face of Kensington Market, the last of Toronto’s neighbourhoods to try to resist complete gentrification.

The Successful Life of 3 playfully examines the intersecting lives and relationships of two men and the woman they share. Its characters are nameless archetypes; He, She and 3, who careen through ten episodic vaudevillian scenes. Mud is grounded in realism and extends 3’s themes of gender roles and disenfranchisement to a dramatic climax. In Mud, the three characters have names; the spirited Mae, her gentle partner Lloyd, and the older Henry. The triangle struggle to fulfill their dreams amidst shifting power struggles.

Maria Irene Fornés writes with truth from a woman’s point of view. Dubbed by many critics as the greatest least acknowledged female playwright of our time, she is a pioneering playwright of the Off-Off Broadway movement. Her over forty plays include The Danube, Fefu and her Friends, Sarita and The Conduct of Life. Fornés was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for And What of the Night? She has won 9 Obie awards; her first for TSLO3 and one for Sustained Achievement. Since 2006, she has been hospitalized with Alzheimer’s, and turns 85 this May. In an article for The Brooklyn Rail, critic Michelle Memran quotes renowned playwright Tony Kushner as saying: “Every time I listen to Fornés, or read or see one of her plays, I feel this: she breathes, has always breathed, a finer, purer, sharper air.”(http://brooklynrail.org/2002/10/theater/moment-to-moment-with-maria-irene-fornes)