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LION IN THE STREETS by Judith Thompson Directed by MFA Directing Candidate Michelle Thorne January 17 — February 2, 2019 Telus Studio Theatre, Chan Centre for the Performing Arts PHOTO BY TIM MATHESON Nov 28, 2018– Jan 06, 2019 WELCOME FROM WELCOME DEPARTMENT HEAD FROM PRESIDENT STEPHEN HEATLEY SANTA ONO Judith Thompson is one of Canada’s most important and It gives me great pleasure to congratulate the Department enduring playwrights. Her play, Lion in the Streets, first of Theatre and Film on its 60th anniversary. appeared on a Canadian stage twenty-eight years ago which, in Canadian theatre terms, makes it a classic. Since the UBC Theatre Department was created in 1958, theatre and film studies have played an important role at The eighth rule for defining a classic in Italian novelist the University. Through its productions, its contributions Italo Calvino’s seminal work Why Read the Classics to critical studies, and through the generations of declares, “A classic is a work which constantly generates a talented theatre and film students who have taken its pulviscular cloud of critical discourse around it, but which courses and programs, the department has greatly always shakes the particles off.” Stated perhaps more simply, a classic is enriched the cultural life of the university, the province and the country. defined as an outstanding example of a particular style; something of lasting worth or with a timeless quality; of the first or highest quality, class, or rank. Again, congratulations, and best wishes for the next 60 years of theatre and film studies at UBC. The last play we produced in our season, Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, is definitely a classic. It has been with us for about 450 years and has been revisited by theatre companies around the world on a regular basis. Professor Santa J. Ono It is clearly a work that continues to speak to both artists and audiences in unique ways in different eras and long after its initial creation. President and Vice-Chancellor The University of British Columbia But Lion in the Streets? For a play that has been part of the theatrical canon for such a relatively short period of time, this is already the third time it has caught the imagination of Theatre at UBC. The last time we followed Isobel on her journey of discovery, was 2002. At that time, the play was presented on the Frederic Wood Theatre stage and featured a very industrial setting comprised of levels of scaffolding, a different vision for a different time. There WINE/SHOW PAIRING BY ALUMNA is something about this “Lion”, this metaphoric idea of a dark, dangerous, and BARBARA PHILIP MW AT THE CHAN CENTRE BAR predatory presence on our streets and in our lives, that continues to resonate with us in 2018. I invite you to lean in with us tonight to try and The Portuguese-Canadian nature of the play (as it was originally written) made wine matching easy as both countries make such delicious wines. For understand why. immigrants from wine producing countries like Portugal, traditional wines Lion in the Streets is one of several events this term in the life of the busiest like the white from Vinho Verde and red from the Dão are an important link department on the UBC campus. I invite you to join us this month for Prince to their culture. For Canadian wines, we celebrate British Columbia with the Hamlet at the Frederic Wood Theatre presented in conjunction with the Gehringer Riesling and Bartier Bros. Merlot. PuSh International Performing Arts Festival and Naked Cinema V: Exposed Quinta do Ameal Loureiro Vinho Verde Portugal at the Vancity Cinema. GOLDRAUSCH, a world premiere translation of the The grape variety Loureiro is said to add laurel leaf scents to play by Guillermo Calderón, directed by our other second year MFA Director this Atlantic coastal wine. Jenny Larson, plays in March, and in April, our celebration of film, both Canadian National Film Day and our annual Persistence of Vision Festival Grão Vasco Dão Portugal featuring twenty-two new short films from our BFA filmmakers. Rounding up Delicious, everyday red with a savoury character. our 60th Anniversary is our May/June presentation of Hosanna by Michel Tremblay, directed by myself, and starring our MFA Acting candidate Frank Gehringer ‘Private Reserve’ Riesling Okanagan Valley, Canada Zotter, as part of the Canadian Association of Theatre Research conference Walter and Gordon Gehringer made their first vintage in 1985. held at the same time as the Film Studies Association conference all happening at the UBC Point Grey campus. Both of these conferences are Bartier Bros. Merlot Okanagan Valley, Canada part of the 2019 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. All of our Merlot, with its dark plum and herbal notes, is the most widely department’s news and events can be found at theatrefilm.ubc.ca. planted grape variety in BC. See you in the theatre again soon! All the best, Stephen Heatley There will be one fifteen minute intermission. UBC’s Point Grey Campus is situated on the Author’s Agent: Great North Artists Management, traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of 350 Dupont Street, Toronto, ON, Canada M5R 1V9 the henqeminem-speaking Musqueam people. LION IN THE STREETS was first produced by Tarragon Theatre (Toronto) in April 1990. lion in the streets 3 NOTE FROM CRACKING DIRECTOR THE CODE MICHELLE THORNE Our story begins with Isobel, the ghost of a murdered Director Michelle Thorne recently completed a course where she studied nine-year-old girl, who awakens lost and confused in a ‘semiotics’ from a textbook called How Theatre Means, by Ric Knowles. The world she almost recognizes as her own. Isobel’s dream- theory is about the observation and interpretation of signs and symbols like world morphs around her, allowing her intimate in the theatre. “The study of the generation and circulation of meaning in access inside the most private and devastating moments societies... is called semiotics.” This essay peeks in at some semiotics engaged of the lives of her former downtown Toronto neighbours in this production. Specifically, we explore the representation of symbolic as she attempts to find her home. Upon Isobel’s ‘cracks’ in the script, the staging, and some of the design elements. realization of her own mortality, her focus goes from that of finding home to finding the man who killed her Cracks in the script - Lion in the Streets is an emotional collage evoking seventeen years prior. When Isobel finally discovers her assailant, ‘the lion in nightmarish images of a Toronto neighbourhood in 1990. Originally written the streets’, she is forced to decide if it will be forgiveness or revenge that will as a series of radio scenes, the play was born fragmented. Then Judith allow her to find true redemption. Thompson structured it for the stage, adding our protagonist, Isobel, to stitch the pieces together. This character fills in the holes. In addition to Haunting, beautiful, dangerous, Judith Thompson’s Lion in the Streets takes a structure, Thompson uses fissures in language, rhythm, and communication look inside the cycles of abuse, and how we hold our own key to breaking free to re-enforce the plight of her characters. In the beginning, Isobel is confused from these cycles. Through Isobel’s eyes we see some of the most painful and her first line warns the audience in broken English, “Doan be scare. Doan depths of the human experience. While this material is challenging to witness, be scare. (turns to audience) Doan be scare of this pickshur!” Her language it is so important that we continue to give voices to the voiceless. Like Isobel, clearly expresses her state and draws the audience into her crumbled world. we must let our hearts talk, and never be silent. We must take our lives back. Cracks in the staging - By talking directly to the audience, Isobel immediately If the subject matter of this play stirs something inside you, please know you ‘breaks the fourth wall’. The director takes her cue from the script and has do not need to sit in silence in your suffering. There are resources available the protagonist roam around the theatre, physically crossing over into our to you: world. Isobel exists in both places. She is the only person who can visit both worlds, and the audience is encouraged to interpret why. Additionally, the stage is in the form of a ‘thrust’, meaning it juts out and there is audience on three sides. Like Isobel, it bridges the gap between the play and reality. On Campus Further, the two main playing spaces are ‘raked’, meaning on an angle UBC Counselling Services compared to the floor of the theatre. This distorts the movement of the https://students.ubc.ca/health/counselling-services actors, and the audience gets a mangled view. According to Thorne, “It’s warped like a nightmare. You look away for one second and when you look Centre for Accessibility back everything has changed.” The director uses staging to create cracks in https://facultystaff.students.ubc.ca/student-development-services/centre- perception. accessibility Cracks in the design - As you enter the theatre, you see the white walls of the Sexual Assault Education and Prevention set with a huge crack. That is an easy one. Over the course of the play, you https://facultystaff.students.ubc.ca/sexual-assault-education-and-prevention find some characters have rips in their costumes and others do not. Hopefully you wonder why. The lighting design, again like Isobel, connects the stories. A functioning streetlight in the middle of the action deviates from tradition by showing everything.

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