A landmark partnership creates Canadian theatre history
04 January 2007
Ottawa – Peter Hinton, Artistic Director of Canada’s National Arts Centre English Theatre yesterday announced that the NAC and UK’s Royal Shakespeare Company will collaborate on the world premiere of Margaret Atwood’s stage adaptation of The Penelopiad to premiere in July 2007 at Stratford-upon-Avon, UK and with an exclusive Canadian engagement to open the 2007-2008 season at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. The Penelopiad marks the first time the Royal Shakespeare Company has collaborated with a Canadian theatre company.
Mr. Hinton, shared the stage with Deborah Shaw, Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company and with Margaret Atwood, one of Canada’s most celebrated and internationally renowned authors.
A milestone for Canadian theatre on the world stage, The Penelopiad marks the first time, since its inception in 1969, that Canada’s National Arts Centre English Theatre will collaborate and perform outside North America – bringing the work of Canadian theatre artists to the international stage. The Penelopiad, a stage adaptation by Margaret Atwood, produced in partnership with one of the world’s finest English-language theatre companies, will create an opportunity for Canadian culture to make a significant mark on the world stage.
This collaboration will be a partnership in every sense of the word. The all female cast will comprise seven of Canada’s top actors and six leading actors from the Royal Shakespeare Company. Both companies also intend the creative team to comprise artists from both countries. The director will be named shortly. This is an unique artistic collaboration, that honours both the classical and contemporary traditions at work in Atwood’s text.
Preliminary dates for the NAC/RSC production of The Penelopiad are as follows:
In 2007
July 27 to August 18
Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, UK
September 17 to October
6 Ottawa, Canada
Discussions are in progress for additional performances in the UK in 2007.
Peter Hinton’s vision for English Theatre at the NAC expresses a commitment to the diversity and calibre of theatre in Canada. His inaugural season as Artistic Director, saw the first programme entirely devoted to the work of Canadian artists in the history of the NAC English Theatre. The Penelopiad project continues the realization of this vision by raising the international profile of Canadian work, and by providing unparalleled opportunities for Canadian theatre artists to create and perform works of scale and relevance on the international stage.
The Royal Shakespeare Company is just coming to the end of an extraordinary year which has seen the biggest artistic project in its history – the Complete Works Festival – present all of Shakespeare’s plays and major poems over twelve months across seven venues in Stratford-upon-Avon, with over half produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company and the rest by visiting companies from the UK, India, Africa, North and South America, Poland, Russia, China, Japan, Italy, Germany and the Middle East. The natural next stage is to continue to develop exciting international dialogues in a series of cross-cultural exchanges and collaborations. The Penelopiad is a key example of this new initiative at work.
Background to the National Arts Centre/Royal Shakespeare Company partnership:
In the fall of 2005, Margaret Atwood approached Peter Hinton with the stage adaptation of her recent book, The Penelopiad, a revisioning of Homer’s epic, The Odyssey, told from the point of view of Penelope and her handmaidens. In October of that year, Ms. Atwood had collaborated with director Phyllida Lloyd to stage a reading of a 30-minute excerpt of the adaptation at St. James’ Piccadilly.
In the summer of 2006, the National Arts Centre secured the rights to an exclusive world option for the premiere production of The Penelopiad in the hopes that the project might be developed in time to be produced for the NAC 40th Anniversary season in 2008.
Meanwhile, Ms Shaw was putting together a season of plays for Spring 2007 in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Swan Theatre around the theme of classical stories retold by contemporary writers, and became very interested in a possible stage adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad. Discussions began with NAC, during the course of which Ms Shaw and Mr Hinton discovered a mutual artistic affinity and resolved to pursue a collaboration, which will mean that a shared production can be seen in both countries.
The importance of The Penelopiad is not limited to the tremendous professional development opportunities, cross-cultural collaborations and profile that it will give Canadian artists. Also of great significance, given the all female cast, is the window opened by the production onto issues facing women in the performing arts. In response to this, the National Arts Centre Foundation is seeking gifts from, or in honour of, leading Canadian “women of influence” from the business community and arts world, to pair with the seven Canadian actors. Each “woman of influence” will be asked to make a lead gift to support the production – seven women of influence matched with seven Canadian actors. Opportunities created by these partnerships might extend to the development of forums or discussion groups in which younger, up and coming women leaders and young female artists might be invited to participate.
The British Council has made a leadership contribution towards The Penelopiad. Canadian funding requests are now in progress. Corporate and other individual support for the project is also being sought. We also acknowledge the support of both British Equity and the Canadian Actors’ Equity Associations, as well as and the assistance of the Canadian High Commission in London.
The far-reaching impact of the NAC/Royal Shakespeare Company partnership is indisputable. The NAC is honoured to be partnering with a theatre company of such stature and to be presenting a new piece of theatre by Margaret Atwood, an artist whose work has had tremendous impact around the world, and nowhere more than in Canada and the UK.
Further information
For more information, please contact:
Philippa Harland
Head of Press
Royal Shakespeare Company
United Kingdom
(+44) 20 7845 0512
philippa.harland@rsc.org.uk
Nada Zakula
Press Office
Royal Shakespeare Company
United Kingdom
(+44) (0)1789 412622
nada.zakula@rsc.org.uk
Dean Asker (for regional UK enquiries)
Press Office
Royal Shakespeare Company
United Kingdom
(+44) (0)1789 412660
dean.asker@rsc.org.uk
or
Laura Denker
Communications Officer
National Arts Centre English Theatre
(613) 947 7000 ext. 389;
ldenker@nac-cna.ca
