Frances Koncan play up for Toronto awards

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This article was published 28/05/2024 (841 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Native Earth Performing Arts production of Manitoba playwright Frances Koncan’s Women of the Fur Trade is up for three prizes at this year’s Dora Mavor Moore Awards, an annual event that has honoured the best work on Toronto stages since 1981.

Since its February 2020 première at Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s Tom Hendry Warehouse Theatre, Koncan’s absurdist, feminist play about the birth of this province has enjoyed continued success, including an Yvette Nolan-directed run at last year’s Stratford Festival and now the Dora-nominated run.

The show by Koncan — a former Free Press arts reporter — was produced by Native Earth in association with the National Arts Centre’s Indigenous Theatre and the Great Canadian Theatre Company. It’s one of five nominated for outstanding new play in the general theatre division, while Lauchlin Johnston and Candelario Andrade are nominated for their scenic and design work and Vanessa Imeson has been recognized for outstanding costume design.

Koncan isn’t the only Manitoban to receive a nomination.

For her work on the Boys in Chairs Collective’s Access Me, a show about queer sexuality and disability, actor, writer and Sick + Twisted Theatre artistic director Debbie Patterson is one of six nominees for outstanding new play in the independent theatre category, joined by Winnipeg-born Ken Harrower, Andrew Gurza, Frank Hill, Brian Postalian and Jonathan Seinen.

In total, 228 nominations were given out across general, independent, musical theatre, opera, dance, and theatre for young audience divisions. The winners will be announced June 24 in Toronto.

A few other not-necessarily-local nominees include Joema Frith and Fiona Sauder, nominated for outstanding ensemble performance in a musical theatre production. A co-founder of Bad Hats Theatre, Sauder — a triple nominee — has brought shows such as Narnia and Alice in Wonderland to Manitoba Theatre for Young People. Frith, who appeared as Sebastian in last year’s Rainbow Stage production of The Little Mermaid, returns to Kildonan Park this summer to star as Bert alongside Colleen Furlan’s Mary in Mary Poppins.

Casey and Diana, produced by Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre Company and the Stratford Festival, is nominated for both outstanding new play and outstanding individual performance. That show will run on the RMTC mainstage in March 2025, directed by Andrew Kushnir, who is nominated for a Dora award this year for outstanding direction of Bad Roads.

Pulga Muchochoma, who choreographed Donna-Michelle St. Bernard’s Diggers at Prairie Theatre Exchange this past season, is a double nominee for opera ensemble performance and individual dance performance, while Anthony Perpuse, who starred in the PTE production of The Waltz, is nominated as part of the ensemble of the Bad Hats’ production Storybook Search.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com