All the world’s an illegal stage for Shakespeare’s daughter By: Ben Waldman Posted: 6:05 PM CDT Monday, Sep. 23, 2024 Last Modified: 8:17 AM CDT Tuesday, Sep. 24, 2024 Updates

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This article was published 23/09/2024 (709 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In William Shakespeare’s day, the idea that his daughter Judith would take up the family business was out of the question: the theatre was yet another arena dominated by fathers and brothers and sons who raised their voices in imitation.

Even if Judith were born to be onstage or in the writers’ room or swinging a hammer on the set’s final nail, would she ever get the chance to do so in the public eye? And would she ever get the credit required to become a household name in her own right?

These are questions asked and answered in Vancouver playwright Tracey Power’s Miss Shakespeare, a revisionist and resistant musical of vocal suppression and expression chosen as the fall production of the Winnipeg Studio Theatre, presented by Rainbow Stage.

Onstage, Judith (Rhea Rodych-Rasidescu, a memorable sidekick to Tess Benger’s Carole King in last year’s Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre production of Beautiful) accesses her creativity to lead a group of women in something secret, subversive and, yes, illegal: the staging of a play.

The all-female cast and crew is led by director Erin McGrath and choreographer Rachael McLaren — a Winnipeg-born dance artist who trained at New York’s Ailey School and has performed all over the world since beginning her former training with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s Jacqui Ladwig at three years old.

But despite both professionals making their careers on and offstage, this production — taking place at the Asper Centre for Theatre & Film from Thursday to Oct. 5 — marks the first time either has worked with a cast, crew and creative team entirely made up of women.

“That has been really special for us because it isn’t something that happens,” says McGrath, the studio theatre’s artistic director, who has worked with dozens of companies throughout the country since graduating from the Randolph College for the Performing Arts.

“We started our rehearsal process with a conversation about the type of experience we wanted this to be because it is so rare. We wanted to make sure we were creating a space and a process where we could have a lot of joy and enjoyment of each other, as well as support, so we can experiment with this work that is challenging, feels dangerous and feels vulnerable.”

“Because this is such a quick process, we were very intentional about how we chose to come together,” McLaren says. “And I think a lot of the themes and the story of the show played out in real time as we worked together, so that we can be daring and push ourselves so that we can reveal a little bit of who we really are through the rehearsal process.”

Early in September, McGrath and McLaren were joined in the rehearsal hall of the Crescent Art Centre, a performance space housed in the Crescent Fort Rouge United Church.

Unlike the characters in the European cabaret-style musical, the Miss Shakespeare team didn’t have to hide out.

Alongside Rodych-Rasidescu’s Judith are Ellen Peterson, Jillian Willems, Andrea del Campo, Julia Davis, Dora Carroll and Hera Nalam. They’re working with a creative team that includes Rainbow Stage band regular Renate Rossol (music director), set designer Julia Anderson, and lighting and costume designer Anika Binding.

Playwright Power’s oeuvre is earmarked by experimental and inviting works often centred on feminist ideals and historical figures. Glory was inspired by a women’s hockey team called the Preston Rivulettes; Hey Viola!, co-created with Krystle Dos Santos, explores the life of Nova Scotia civil rights activist Viola Desmond; and Living Shadows, a one-woman show about Canadian-born actress/studio founder Mary Pickford, toured across the country and won two Sterling Awards, given out annually to the best in Edmonton theatre.

Her work has been staged in Winnipeg before, though it has been 10 years since her Chelsea Hotel: The Songs of Leonard Cohen played at Prairie Theatre Exchange.

McGrath got to know Power — who wrote Miss Shakespeare’s book and lyrics, and co-wrote the music with Steve Charles — when the two were cast in a Citadel Theatre-PTE production of Ubuntu in 2017.

“Tracey and I were the only women in the show, so, of course, we shared a dressing room, and she was telling me about this show she had written, and about how deeply she cared about it and how it wasn’t getting a lot of attention,” says McGrath, who moved to Winnipeg from New Brunswick in 2005.

“I was incredibly intrigued by it and a number of years ago asked her to send me the script and then the tracks; it was a show that sat on my bookshelf until it felt like the right time. Where I’m at in my career, in my personal journey, what I personally needed, was a celebration of women. The phrase I’ve been using is ‘joyful rage.’”

Though the piece is set in the 1600s, Miss Shakespeare hits on very contemporary emotions, the director says.

“It feels very present and very timely for all of us, in terms of feeling like women have a place onstage and fighting to have our voices heard.

“We’re feeling the power, the energy and the joy that women can have in a group accomplishing something like this.”

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com

 

Rainbow Stage expands its palette with fall productions

Rainbow Stage’s role as a presenter for Miss Shakespeare marks the second consecutive year that the summer musical theatre institution has put on its autumn sweater.

Last September, the company decided to enhance its support for new and worthwhile Manitoban and Canadian works through a partnership with the upstart Walk&Talk Theatre Company on the original vampire romance Afterlight, starring Duncan Cox and Sharon Bajer, who collaborated on the musical comedy’s book and lyrics.

After the 70th season for Rainbow Stage in Kildonan Park, artistic director Carson Nattrass says the company’s rationale for supporting new works became apparent.

“It really was kind of a magical summer,” he said.

Season opener Ma-Buhay, an all-Filipino musical written and created by Winnipeg’s Joseph Sevillo, might not have sold out every show, but Nattrass says it reached its target in many aspects.

“I’d say that the impact on our community was immense,” the artistic director says.

Throughout the show’s multi-year development process, more than 200 artists were trained in areas including choreography, performance, composition, stagecraft and multimedia work.

Meanwhile, thousands of audience members spent their first evening under the Rainbow umbrella, Nattrass says,

The risk inherent in taking on new work was counterbalanced by the season’s final production of Mary Poppins, a spoonful of sugar that was frequently witnessed by audiences at or near 90 per cent of the venue’s 2,000-seat capacity.

“It was extraordinary,” says Nattrass, who appeared in the 2013 production of Poppins at Rainbow. “Eleven years later, boy, did that audience not forget, and they came right back.”

With the second fall presentation of a Canadian musical, Rainbow Stage has proven that new traditions can start at any point in a company’s existence.

Nattrass credits the renewed commitment to Canadian creators to the memorable 2019 production of Strike!, the passion project of the irrepressible impresario Danny Schur, who died in 2023.

“That was the beginning. Rainbow Stage has always been dedicated to Manitoba talent, but historically that has been through musicians and performers, but not authors and composers. It’s completely within our mandate to support those musical theatre artists, too,” Nattrass says

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com