Indie theatre troupe presents work by Pulitzer winner

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This article was published 28/05/2024 (528 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Even before he saw the first New York production of playwright Annie Baker’s The Antipodes, George Toles already considered himself an avowed Baker fanboy, even if he’d almost certainly use different words.

In 2015, Toles directed Baker’s Obie-winning Circle Mirror Transformation at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival, following it up two years later with her Pulitzer-winning The Flick, a sweeping working-class drama set in the popcorn-littered aisles of a rundown movie theatre.

“Both of those experiences were extraordinarily rewarding,” says Toles, a screenwriting collaborator on such Guy Maddin films as My Winnipeg and The Saddest Music in the World who has taught English, film and theatre at the University of Manitoba since 1978.

“I have such high regard for Baker as a playwright. In fact, if I had to choose a favourite living American playwright, it would either be Annie Baker or a very old John Guare (Six Degrees of Separation).”

So Toles — producer/director of local theatre company the 28th Minute — had celestial expectations for inspired absurdity and pointed social critique when the lights dimmed at the Signature Theatre for the off-Broadway première of The Antipodes.

He was blown away.

“I thought the production was remarkable, and that the play was better than remarkable,” he says.

“But what I remember best is my wife saying afterward, ‘That may well be the best play I’ve ever seen.’ She isn’t prone to making such incredible claims.

“We reversed the usual order of conversation. I mean, often I start to hold forth after something I liked, but she was so filled with impressions, ideas and questions about the play that I was lapping it all up for a solid hour.”

After that 2017 production in his home state, Toles, originally from Buffalo, took a group of family and friends to see Toronto’s Coal Mine Theatre’s version of The Antipodes, starring two of his former U of M students, Ari Cohen and Simon Bracken.

“Again, it was followed by an immediate need to discuss the play at length,” he says, calling the Toronto staging better than New York’s. “Someone made an identical claim to (my wife) Melissa.”

Toles knew that eventually, the 28th Minute would need to bring the show to Winnipeg for its local première.

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Since the company’s first show — Lyle Kessler’s Orphans at the 2012 fringe — the 28th Minute has been independently producing, on an annual basis, some of the most cutting theatre in the city, mixing contemporary, should-be classic works with vintage, could-be contemporary hits.

With each production populated by alumni of the U of M’s Black Hole Theatre Company and the extensive Winnipeg improv community, each 28th Minute show benefits from Toles’ scholarly oversight and his team’s playful willingness to lean into do-everything-ourselves theatre-making.

The 28th Minute — ironically named for the highly specific alarm-clock setting of the main character in the cult-trash film The Room — has mounted works by Kenneth Lonergan (Lobby Hero), Tennessee Williams (Suddenly, Last Summer, Confessional), Wendy MacLeod (The House of Yes) and Horton Foote (Courtship).

In 2023, the company’s version of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons proved a timely, explosive exploration of the complex proximity of the military industry and the prototypical nuclear family.

To finance each show, the company ties its shoestrings together in hopes of cobbling together a production befitting the work they select. Much of the funding is drawn from Toles’ professional development allowance from the university, which he treats as seed money for the production.

All revenues are divvied up between the actors and the production team, says Toles, whose cut is purely spiritual.

But profit is far from guaranteed, says co-producer/actor Kevin Ramberran.

“Winnipeg is a hugely supportive community when it comes to the arts, but it can be a very tough fight to get the word out about a show, to get people interested.”

“All My Sons last year was a smash hit, really successful as far as butts in seats are concerned,” adds Ramberran.

“But at the end of the day, George still donated a significant amount of his personal money toward (the show) and didn’t expect to receive any back, which is how we paid our actors even close to what’s considered an equity rate.

“The short answer is it’s hard, and it isn’t necessarily a very profitable venture, even when, like us, you’ve been successful without (consistent) grant funding.”

The challenges of such creative pursuits are stretched and dissected in The Antipodes, set in a contentious and overstuffed writers’ room consumed by myth-making.

A veteran writer (played by Darcy Fehr) leads the troops — including Stanlee Arches, Jesse Bergen, Cuinn Joseph, Stephen Sim, Jane Walker, Kerri Woloszyn, Justin Fry, Bracken and Ramberran — with no clear idea which story he wants them to tell.

“He’s completely up in the air about what he wants and what they’re supposed to create,” says Toles. “He’s looking for a story that’s going to blow people away.”

“Many different kinds of stories are on offer within the play as the group lurches around trying to find the elusive golden fleece — that right story to address in just the right way the ailments, quandaries and horrors of the present age — to come to the rescue.”

Could The Antipodes be exactly that type of story?

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com