Centaur Theatre 2017: Clybourne Park

Centaur Theatre /48th Season

CLYBOURNE PARK

The Quebec English-language Premiere 

April 4-30, 2017

Pulitzer, Olivier, and Tony award winning play 

Written by Bruce Norris
Directed by Ellen David

Written by an American playwright Bruce Norris,.this is a multi-award-winning play, including the prestigious Pulitzer Prize. When it first hit stages in 2009, it garnered almost every honour the theatre world could bestow upon it, including the Tony Award, and the Evening Standard and  Laurence Olivier awards (UK) for Best Play.

The play brings into focus issues that have affected American society in the past 50 years. These are repetitive themes that come in waves with different and changing social strata configurations finding themselves to deal with the same issues only with more current takes on them.

Clybourne Park takes audiences back in time to 1959 Chicago in an all-white, middle class neighbourhood. Spinning off of Lorraine Hansberry’s seminal play, A Raisin in the Sun, Bev and Russ have sold their house to a black family, upsetting the ‘social order’ and creating havoc among their friends. Act Two fast-forwards to 2009 where the tables are turned as a white couple attempts to buy and tear down the very same house to erect a more pretentious home, now in an all-black community, triggering identical issues fifty years later. Clybourne Park looks at prejudice, property, and political correctness, then and now, in a blisteringly funny and timely satire.

Centaur Artistic and Executive Director, Roy Surette's comment:

“What I love about this play, is its theatricality, starting out in the 50s in the first act and then abruptly plunging us into the same setting fifty years later. Also, every day, the relevancy of this play and its themes become more significant.”

Close to 120 artists auditioned for this production, in which every actor has at least two roles.

Actors chosen: Matthew Gagnon, Marcel Jeannin, Liana Montoro, Lisa Bronwyn Moore, Eleanor Noble, Kwasi Songui and Harry Standjofski

SET DESIGNER: Michael Eagan

LIGHTING DESIGNER: Guy Simard

STAGE MANAGER: Michael Sinclair 

ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER: Jacynthe Lalonde
ASSISTANT TO THE DIRECTOR: Laurent McCuaig-Pitre

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For more information, visit the Centaur Theatre website.

Chat Up

April 9,  12:30 PM

FREE ADMISSION

Join Lucinda Chodan, Montreal Editor in Chief of Montreal Gazette as she speaks with Professor Hélène Bélanger from the Department of Urban and Tourism Studies at l’Université du Québec à Montréal.  Ms. Bélanger will talk about gentrification in Montreal and the impact it has on its citizens, businesses and the cultural fabric of the community.

Complimentary coffee and biscotti, courtesy of Season Sponsor, Bonaparte Restaurant..