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Seana Mckenna to Star in Canadian Premiere of Joan Didion’S the Year of Magical Thinking

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Seana Mckenna to Star in Canadian Premiere of Joan Didion’S the Year of Magical Thinking NEWS RELEASE Monday, October 19, 2009 For immediate release SEANA MCKENNA TO STAR IN CANADIAN PREMIERE OF JOAN DIDION’S THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING "Remarkable. It will break your heart." The New York Times October 19, 2009 - Seana McKenna, one of this country’s finest actors, will star in the Canadian premiere of Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking at the Belfry Theatre from November 10 to December 13, 2009. Directed by Belfry Artistic Director Michael Shamata, The Year of Magical Thinking is based on Didion’s best selling memoir of the same name. In The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion, one of America’s great essayists and novelists, captures the compassion, humour and bewilderment of a fiercely intelligent woman whose world lurches suddenly from the ordinary to the unimaginable. This is Didion’s attempt to make sense of the “weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . about marriage and children and memory . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.” Told with raw candour and a storyteller’s gift for the absurd, this magnificently written meditation on grief – ‘a place none of us know until we reach it’ – is also a celebration of family, filled with a luminous belief in the power of the human spirit to overcome heartbreak and to endure. Joan Didion Joan Didion was born in Sacramento, California. In 1964, she married John Gregory Dunne, an aspiring novelist who was writing for Time magazine. The couple moved to Los Angeles with the intention of staying six months and ended up making their home there for the next 20 years. The pair adopted a baby girl they named Quintana Roo, after the state on the eastern coast of Mexico. In late 2003, Quintana, fell gravely ill. Shortly after returning from a visit to their comatose child in the hospital, her husband, John Gregory Dunne, suffered a fatal heart attack. Joan Didion wrote a searing account of her journey through grief in The Year of Magical Thinking. At the time she finished the book, her daughter appeared to be recovering from her illness, but by the time the book was published, Quintana had died. The Year of Magical Thinking was published to widespread acclaim and received the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2005. Her first seven books of nonfiction have been collected in a single volume, We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live. (http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/did0bio-1) Se ana McKenna A graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada, Seana has played lead roles in many major houses across the country including Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Grand Theatre, London), Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth, Portia, Viola, Cordelia, and Juliet (Stratford Festival), The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (Belfry Theatre , Neptune Theatre , National Arts Centre , Manitoba Theatre Centre), Blanche in Streetcar Named Desire (Theatre New Brunswick), Eliza in Pygmalion and Candida (Shaw Festival), Medea and Hedda Gabler (MTC). Belfry Theatre | 1291 Gladstone Avenue | Victoria, British Columbia | Canada | V8T 1G5 1 She won a Jessie Richardson Award for her performance in Wit (Vancouver Playhouse) and Dora Mavor Moore Awards for her performances in Saint Joan (Theatre Plus) and Orpheus Descending (Mirvish Productions / MTC) and her direction of Valley Song. Seana won a Genie Award for Best Supporting Actress for the 1997 film The Hanging Garden. The creative team for The Year of Magical Thinking includes Designer John Ferguson, Lighting Designer Michael Walton, Composer Brad L’Ecuyer , and Stage Manager Kim Charleen Smith. This production of The Year of Magical Thinking is made possible with the generous support of The Fairmont Empress, Focus Magazine, 98.5 the Ocean, Times Colonist, Allison Piano, The Canada Council for the Arts, British Columbia Arts Council, The Province of BC and the CRD Arts Development. Performance Schedule Tuesdays at 8 pm Wednesdays at 1 pm* Wednesdays at 8 pm Thursdays at 8 pm Fridays at 8 pm Saturdays at 4 pm Saturdays at 8 pm Sundays at 2 pm Wednesday Matinees – November 18, 25 Ticket Information Tickets range from $23 - $38 and are on sale now at the Belfry Theatre Box Office - 250-385-6815 or online at www.belfry.bc.ca. Student discounts are 50% off for high school students and 25% off for university and college students (discounts not valid on Fridays or Saturdays at 8 pm) Resource Links (available at www.belfry.bc.ca) Joan Didion and Vanessa Redgrave Interview with Charlie Rose - Play Joan Didion Interview with Charlie Rose - Memoir Performance Calendar - http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=belfrytheatre%40gmail.com&ctz=America/Vancouver Publicity Photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/10219958@N07/sets/72157622185681003/ Show URL - http://www.belfry.bc.ca/shows-outreach/the-year-of-magical-thinking/ - 30 - Media Contact Mark Dusseault 250-385-6835 [email protected] Belfry Theatre | 1291 Gladstone Avenue | Victoria, British Columbia | Canada | V8T 1G5 2 .
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