Theatre company celebrates 30 years
Two Planks and a Passion Theatre Company will celebrate its 30th anniversary season with an ambitious three-production outdoor season of theatre.
The event will include collaboration with Theatre du Poulet that will be presented by the National Arts Centre English Theatre.
“While the third wave of the pandemic has undoubtedly delayed our plans to celebrate our 30th anniversary, it has not dimmed our spirit nor curtailed our ambition,” said Ross Creek Centre for the Arts artistic director Ken Schwartz.
The 2021 season includes the Atlantic premiere of Schoolhouse by Leanna Brodie, a fireside production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and First Flight, a Two Planks and a Passion Production in association with Theatre du Poulet, presented by National Arts Centre English Theatre’s Grand Acts of Great Hope, which will be shared at the Ross Creek Centre on July 10.
The company announced a new schedule that featured a mid-July opening and the postponement of The Stranger until 2022 due to the pandemic.
The National Arts Centre English Theatre is bringing together some of the country’s most inventive artists to create and perform innovative new works with Grand Acts of Great Hope, which was co-curated by NAC English Theatre artistic director Jillian Keiley and Boca del Lupo artistic director Sherry J Yoon.
Performances will be offered safely in front of local audiences and later shared online.
First Flight, the sole Atlantic Canadian entry in this nation-wide series, is a beautiful moment of joy and release- a bird’s first flight - created through larger-than life puppetry in a stunning outdoor setting. Created by Two Planks and a Passion Theatre and Theatre du Poulet in collaboration with community members in rural Nova Scotia, this performance, taking place at the Ross Creek Centre for the Arts, represents a
community’s hope for the future and re-emergence into the realm of collective experience.
Schoolhouse will also come to the stage. Leanna Brodie (playwright, Schoolhouse) is an actor, playwright, and translator whose passions include lifting up the stories and voices of women as well as championing a new generation of French-Canadian playwrights by transmitting their extraordinary theatrical visions into the English language. Schoolhouse chronicles a new teacher’s struggle to connect with a boy cut off from everyone, including himself - and to persuade a cautious and close-knit community to open its arms to a stranger in their midst.
“I wanted to look at the kind of place I had grown up in and see what had shaped its values and what they were, and how people were taken in and cared for, and what happened when they were not,” said Brodie.
The cast for Two Planks and a Passion’s 2021 season includes many familiar to Two Planks audiences. Returning performers include Burgandy Code, Jeff Schwager, Chris O’Neill, Ryan Rogerson, Matthew Lumley, Hilary Adams and Melanie Leblanc. New to the company are Micha Cromwell, Ursula Calder and Henricus Gielis.
Allen Cole is the musical director for the 2021 season. Jennifer Goodman returns to design costumes for both Schoolhouse and Macbeth, and Schwartz directs both productions.
Previews begin on July 15 and both shows open on July 17. The season closes on Sept. 4.
Since Two Planks and a Passion’s first outdoor season at Ross Creek in 2007, the company has been nominated for 103 Merritt Awards for excellence in professional theatre in Nova Scotia, winning 31 times.
For more information, go to http://www.artscentre.ca/ twoplanks.html