Coal Mine’s new season takes a turn toward hope
Lineup includes Cost of Living, in which performers share same disabilities as their characters
A tiny storefront theatre on the Danforth has become a hot spot for dark, intense and challenging work — so much so that the Star chronicled its use of trigger warnings for a production earlier this year — but now there’s a shift in the Coal Mine Theatre’s mandate.
“People want to come to feel safe, to feel hope, uplifted,” says Diana Bentley, co-artistic director with her husband, Ted Dykstra.
“I think this season does have this true line of optimism, hope and love,” she said, referring to the newly announced 2019/20 season. “Sometimes we’re in a place where everything is hunky-dory and you actually want to turn to the theatre to feel challenged as much as possible. I think right now, actually, there’s a longing to turn and be back with stories that make us feel better.”
The best example of this theme is the 2018 Pulitzer winner Cost of Living by Martyna Majok, about two people living with disabilities and the people hired to care for them. For the first time, Coal Mine will feature performers who share the same disabilities as their characters: L.A.-based actor and activist Eileen Grubba, who sustained a spinal cord injury as a child, and 26-year-old Whitby actor Sean Towgood, who has cerebral palsy.
“Cost of Living was a show that I wanted to do ever since I first read it,” says Towgood, who discovered the script while looking for something to self-produce. “It really struck me as a natural, real-to-life experience of a person with a disability that you don’t get very often.
“Disability doesn’t define these characters, these characters are defined by the relationships they have.”
Bentley says working with Towgood and Grubba on Cost of Living is part of the growing process at Coal Mine, which has developed a loyal following in its Danforth neighbourhood, routinely selling out its 80-seat venue.
Coal Mine will also spend the next year making its inaccessible space functional for two actors with disabilities.
Cost of Living will run April 5 to April 26, 2020, and will be directed by Dykstra.
The season begins Sept. 22 with the influential 1995 play Knives in Hens by David Harrower, directed by Leora Morris, and featuring Bentley, Jim Mezon and Jonathon Young in a love triangle in a pre-industrial rural community.
Pulitzer Prize winner Between Riverside and Crazy by Stephen Adly Guirgis will follow in late November, directed by Kelli Fox, and starring Claire Armstrong, Zarrin Darnell-Martin, Sergio Di Zio, Allegra Fulton, Jai Jai Jones, Nabil Rajo and Alexander Thomas in a snapshot of a gentrifying New York City through the eyes of a retired cop.
Marjorie Prime by Jordan Harrison will begin its run in January 2020, directed by Stewart Arnott, and starring Martha Henry, Beau Dixon, Sarah Dodd and Gordon Hecht in a futuristic exploration of mourning and memory straight out of Black Mirror.